Federal government technology officials are predicting a renaissance in software development innovation over the next four years with gains driven by the use of AI-assisted development, open source software, and cloud-native development.
That’s one of the top-line findings from new research published today by MeriTalk and ICF – “Federal Software Reimagined: Fueling Mission Success with Open Source, AI, and Cloud.” The report surveys 100 Federal government civilian agency IT decision-makers.
The crucial roles of AI, open source, and cloud-native drivers in software innovation received nearly unanimous endorsement from the Federal officials surveyed in the research report.
On top of that, 71 percent envision that the Trump administration will be instrumental in ushering in a new era of innovation for software development. Notably, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) created by President Trump has the stated mission of “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
In President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order establishing DOGE, software-driven gains are preeminent in the Federal government’s technology planning. Those marching orders feature instructions to “commence a Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and IT systems,” to create interoperability between disparate Federal networks and systems, and focus on data integrity, collection, and synchronization.
While the administration’s top-down direction is clear on software modernization, the bottom-up findings from the new research present a more complicated picture.
The research reveals that only about one-third of the Federal IT decision-makers would assign their agencies an “A” grade for security and efficiency, and only 28 percent would give their agencies the highest mark on their ability to support innovation.
“Modern software development strategies are significantly impacting Federal civilian agencies’ overall mission success,” said Kyle Tuberson, Chief Technology Officer, ICF. “To address this effectively, agencies must leverage AI-assisted development, prioritize cloud-native approaches for security and scalability, and embrace open source to drive innovation, efficiency, and collaboration.”
Still, among the decision-makers that identified as strong proponents and early adopters of the software modernization push, the strategy is yielding results.
Two-thirds of them report that modern software development strategies employing AI, open source, and cloud-native approaches are having the effect of improving operational efficiency and data access. Slightly less – 64 percent – say the approach is boosting cybersecurity and data protection, and more than half are seeing an improvement in the time it takes to deliver citizen services.
And those findings just scratch the surface of the results from the “Federal Software Reimagined: Fueling Mission Success with Open Source, AI, and Cloud” report. The new report is available for download today.