On Monday I will be speaking before representatives of the US House of Representatives about legacy systems. The question is to invest in brand new systems and technology or just to kind of glue together things on top of old systems. The question boils down to one of public policy, should the Congress pass laws mandating this, or should they give some autonomy (and budget to attract some talent) to their in-house IT staffs.
I am working with the Association for Competitive Technology on this issue. We feel that scraping the old and leapfrogging over a generation of technology or two is the best bet. Get some creative destruction on Capital Hill from new IT systems. Treat the IT departments like a business, not a governmental agency. Give them budgets and goals and have them develop the applications and processes required. A little autonomy can go a long way.
