On December 8, 2021, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released its 2022 annual top 10 priorities list identifying the most pressing technology and policy issues that state CIOs are prioritizing for the upcoming year.

Adhering closely to the U.S. federal government’s top legislative priorities for 2022, state chief information officers (CIO’s) have once again ranked cybersecurity as their top priority for 2022, following an already established decade-long trend in this direction.

Recent signals by the U.S. federal government suggest that customer experience (CX), primarily citizen-facing services will receive attention and investment from funding sources like the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). The initial $311 million awarded by the TMF primarily went to projects focused on cybersecurity in keeping with stated priorities and the prevalence of cybersecurity threats. From the beginning, however, TMF has emphasized CX projects that focus on how taxpayers engage with government services in secure digital environments.

The concept of cloud computing has been around for many years now. Anyone positioned in the information technology (IT) world knows the language: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, multi-cloud, hybrid, on-prem, and the list goes on. How has the concept of cloud morphed? More importantly, what are the cloud buzzwords and concepts that you should be aware of to get in front of end-users? Edge computing, data-centric architecture and sky computing are emerging, and here to stay. Let’s break down what each is and its current or future role in the U.S. federal market.

President Joe Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2022 (FY22) into law on December 27, 2021. It authorizes $770 billion in defense spending which is a 5% increase over last year. This marks 61 consecutive years that a bill received bipartisan support from congress (a display of agreement that has become increasingly rare for DC politics).

With another busy year behind us, it’s time to look ahead to fiscal year (FY) 2022. The official information technology (IT) budget request is $97B, a 4% increase over FY21, which would be a new record. Of course, those numbers undercount all the IT spending that goes unreported. Furthermore, remaining provisions in the American Rescue Plan, the Technology Modernization Fund and IT provisions in the Infrastructure Bill will represent additional pockets of opportunity worth billions for channel partners and technology vendors.

The numbers don't lie. The U.S. public sector is rapidly adopting cloud technologies across the spectrum. According to the NASCIO 2020 State CIO Survey, only 14% of state chief information officer (CIO) organizations do not have a cloud migration strategy, whereas 41% of respondents indicated that they had implemented a cloud first strategy for all new applications.

We’re in the month of September, the busiest time of the year for those selling to the Federal government. When the dust has settled on Q4 of this federal fiscal year, our customers will have spent roughly $30 billion in “fall out money” on IT. That’s a term for funding agencies and offices will lose if they don’t allocate it by September 30. If an office, agency, or department leaves appropriated funds on the table, they’ll have a hard time justifying why they need the same or higher funding levels the following year, hence the year-end rush.

Are you next? Will criminals target your organization with ransomware? No one can say for sure, so prepare now.

Here are four and a half critical decisions to make – and things to do – before a crisis hits.  

(What’s half a decision, you ask? What’s half an action, you may wonder. Read to end if you want to find out).

1. Do: Have a plan

This sounds so obvious, but I have seen major organizations in business and government scrambling to respond to a ransomware attack. Your plan should include at least these elements?

President Biden has recently issued the “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity”, which requires government agencies to present plans for implementing a Zero Trust architecture, imposes stringent standards for threat sharing on government contractors and agencies alike, requires software vendors to show a Software Bill of Materials to demonstrate the security of their products, and seeks broad modernization of the Federal government’s cybersecurity posture.