What federal IT could look like under the second Trump administration

Former government officials expect data and acquisition to be at the forefront of the incoming Trump administration’s tech priorities, with both areas tying back to the president-elect’s focus on government efficiency across the federal landscape.

In interviews with FedScoop, officials who served during President Donald Trump’s first term and other White House veterans said the stated goals of the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are likely to inform many of the administration’s tech moves.

The incoming administration could, for example, continue focusing heavily on implementing a federal data strategy as a means to assess the quality of government operations and its efficiency, according to Mark Forman, the administrator of the White House Office of E-Government and IT under President George W. Bush, the role that is now known as the federal CIO. Forman and a source familiar with the inner workings of the first Trump administration agreed that as artificial intelligence continues to be a technology of interest, data will be a top priority for the executive branch. 

Officials also expect industry to have a more prominent role in advising the federal government on technology and supplying commercial IT solutions, according to a former White House staffer and a former commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service. 

Said Forman: “The jury-rigged flow of data from how we’re accounting for expenditures and what we’re actually spending on creates all kinds of inaccuracies that makes it hard to do simple things. … I think that the DOGE is trying to … find out where there’s efficiencies that can be cut without much pain. So there’s a data quality issue.”

That issue is one of a handful that former federal tech leaders expect will be addressed over the next four years, despite the DOGE lacking any legal authority and operating more as an advisory council. 

The case for a “reinvigorated” federal data strategy

A federal data strategy under the first Trump administration began as a way to assist agencies with making more data-driven decisions and to improve the entire U.S. government’s approach to data stewardship, according to the Partnership for Public Service. 

The strategy was a priority during the first Trump term, the source familiar with the previous administration said, creating an expectation that data will continue to be a focus area — especially given artificial intelligence’s reliance on data. They said they believe there are continued opportunities to “break down data silos across the federal government” to promote data-sharing between agencies. 

There are “a lot of opportunities” for “big programs that cross multiple agencies” to not just move data but to “access it, to do a query or a check,” the source said. That approach can “further drive efficiencies across the federal government.”  

Forman agreed and pointed to how agencies might not be able to manage data efficiently because of a lack of compliance with standards from agencies or strategy from the executive branch in recent years. He offered the example of how agencies might have one piece of data being parsed in various terminologies or data descriptions because of government operations, not because the data is different.

“I think that the reason we don’t have good data architectures and good data stewardship from the federal government goes much deeper into how we’re managing data, what we’re using that data for and these siloed systems,” Forman said. 

The federal data strategy website has not posted an action plan or a progress report for the action plan since 2021. Forman said that’s likely because the strategy implementation “hasn’t really been managed by” the Office of Management and Budget. OMB did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

“We’ll see, ultimately, the need for a strategy and an action plan that has data in it but extends much further, beyond data,” Forman said. “It’s going to get to the organizational structure of government. I think that’s gotta come out of OMB and the White House.”

Industry’s role in the future of federal acquisition

The former FAS commissioner believes that moving forward, they can envision the Trump administration taking steps to leverage some commercial IT solutions that the industry has to offer.

That means that industry leaders could find themselves in roles where they’re informing the incoming leaders on the federal IT landscape or even just offering up a new system or capability for government use.

“I think most stakeholders understand that in order to achieve some of these efficiencies, you need to adopt, you need to have fast solutions galore — open and ready for the government to access,” the former commissioner said.

The government always has to be careful to not put so much infrastructure in place that acquisition professions have to go through “so many steps” to purchase a capability, the former director added. 

The former White House staffer, meanwhile, said that acquisition could be accelerated as the incoming administration looks to rid the government of anything that is “perceived to be slow and bureaucratic” so that “the government can start ingesting more technology.” 

The former staffer pointed to the administration potentially using industry offerings of aggressive, thoughtful and bleeding-edge technologies to further their political agenda and overarching priorities quickly. 

“If you are one of America’s leading technology companies and you do business with the federal government, this is a tremendous opportunity for you,” the former staffer said. “If they’re going to decrease bureaucracy and decrease the number of federal workers, then it stands to reason that they’re going to increase the reliance on industry.” 

The DOGE

Each former official who spoke to FedScoop brought up DOGE, the nongovernmental council that Trump announced soon after the election. In a recent post on his X platform, Musk spoke about the need to update legacy IT systems across the federal government. He republished part of a Government Accountability Office report that addressed challenges with legacy IT systems.

Musk also tweeted this month that the federal government’s computers and software “are in such bad shape that they often cannot verify that payments are not fraud, waste or abuse.” Making the government more efficient and fixing the deficit, he added, are only doable with more reliable computers.

Forman said that the DOGE is going to have to address more than just outdated technology; identifying what the government is doing that no longer needs to be done could be viewed as a broader way to modernize. He said he would always like to see government become more efficient and effective, “and that generally means fewer people, more reliance on technology.”

The former White House staffer said that early indications of the DOGE being a technology-focused group that prioritizes the reduction of waste could mean that technology is the lever that the incoming administration will pull once there are fewer people working in the federal government.

They pointed to Musk’s approach in transitioning Twitter to X as a roadmap for what eliminating waste in the federal government could look like. 

“Systemic change is hard, but that’s what people like … Elon Musk do,” the former staffer said.