Nuclear Regulatory Commission has eliminated all legacy systems, CIO says

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not use any legacy IT, having either decommissioned or modernized all of its systems, according to the independent agency’s chief information officer. 

In an interview with FedScoop last week, NRC CIO Scott Flanders said that even though the agency has turned the page on systems defined by the Government Accountability Office as “outdated or obsolete,” there is still work to be done for modernization and evaluation of the agency’s technology stack. 

The NRC is approaching those efforts in the most cost-effective way, Flanders said. Recent discussions with the agency’s new chief financial officer and others have Flanders’ team considering how modernization can be enhanced to be “more forward-looking.”

“It’s all in the effort of continued improvement,” Flanders said. “Just allow us to be able to better anticipate and be out in front of our needs from a technology standpoint while we’re managing costs … and make sure we’re making the right investments where we have opportunities.”

Flanders said he and the CFO co-chair a technology council that considers how to approach modernization with respect to budget cycles. 

“Even without a working capital fund, we’re able to modernize, we’ve been able to get resources through our budget process,” Flanders said.

The NRC earned a ‘B’ on the latest Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard, in line with its 2023 grade. Flanders believes the scorecard places value on having a working capital fund.

“Working capital also presents some additional activities that are necessary in order to manage that fund,” Flanders said. “We feel like, if we’re making good progress in the modernization effort, is it really necessary to have a fund?”

In response to a legislative request for information from a House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee in 2021, the NRC said that an obstacle to implementing the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act was that there are no statutes — including the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 — that provide the NRC with authority to transfer money into an IT system modernization and working capital fund. 

“With respect to challenges associated with the agency’s efforts to meet the intent of the MGT Act, there is general uncertainty associated with future annual budgets, in turn, creating uncertainty regarding the agency’s ability to meet repayment obligations if the TMF is used as a funding source,” the document states. 

The NRC had said it would “continue to monitor and assess the impact of all applicable legislation on the agency’s ability to modernize IT.”

Flanders told FedScoop that the FITARA scorecard “gives a perspective from one lens” and that “if you look at it from other lenses, you may get a different view of the progress that we’re making.”

“But I do think that we’re focused on the right things around our modernization efforts,” he said, “and that we’ve been able to make pretty steady progress and modernizing our systems.”