TECH INSIGHTS: Understanding Technical Debt for State Government

Red River

When delivering reliable services to individuals and communities, managing resources across a state government means minimizing and eliminating costly investments that impede an agency’s ability to meet changing demands. Just as financial debt accumulates interest over time, so does technical debt. Understanding technical debt and its impact on state government can dramatically improve operational efficiency so that agencies can drive better outcomes for the communities they serve. So, what is technical debt?

Technical Debt & It’s Affects Downstream
Technical debt refers to the cost of design, development and technology decisions made to address short and long term needs. A company that is proactively addressing their end-of-life technology or future solution needs will likely reduce their overall tech debt. However, addressing these needs becomes increasingly harder and more time-consuming to manage if legacy solutions are left in place for too long. Organizations can end up having to pay more in the long run just to support these outdated solutions, which increases their overall technical debt.

This creates a myriad of downstream issues for state agencies including: inefficiencies across the infrastructure, a weakened organizational security framework and a limited ability to adopt next-generation innovation. Any one of these issues can have a negative impact but when combined and compounded over time, technical debt can create a “debt” that is too large to “repay.”

The continued rise of cybercrime has only exacerbated the cost. Organizations are at risk of undermining their overall security posture throughout their IT infrastructure. Technical debt can weaken an organization’s security framework by creating vulnerabilities through outdated systems, improperly designed infrastructure and missing updates needed for optimal operations. Collectively, these shortcuts to support temporary needs leave organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks, compliance issues and data breaches.

Agencies must address the long-term sustainability of both equipment and software systems – many of which may lack the documentation and specifications that agencies need to validate their systems. This validation
is what allows IT leaders to understand the potential use or risk associated with these systems. It’s also important to understand the interdependency between systems, as not simply a stand-alone solution but part of a complex interconnection of technology. A change to one portion – even to reduce technical debt – can impact other systems and lead to compounding issues. While cost is a major driver for maintaining existing equipment, patching delays can occur or be missed altogether, giving hackers a prime target. When technology is pieced together over time to meet short-term needs, it makes management and incident prevention more difficult, increasing the risk of gaps in security. When technical debt is not managed, it leads to failures in meeting compliance standards that are necessary for state organizations. In the intricate landscape of state and local government services, the network stands as a linchpin for mission execution. Often times this technical debt stems from outdated devices, old operating systems, incomplete configurations, and legacy operational and consumption models. The longer it remains unresolved, the more resources are required to fix it. It impacts the delivery of new projects and weakens operational resilience. But there are ways to reduce your agency’s technical debt.

Implementing a “Technical Wellness” Approach
A new paradigm called “technical wellness” seeks to address technical debt by focusing on proactive and preventive care. This involves using enhanced tracking, measurement, and predictions to address suboptimal
technologies before they become larger issues.

This can involve acknowledging and identifying critical areas of technical debt and developing a roadmap to address them proactively. With this roadmap you can begin to strategize on how to gradually update legacy
systems and migrate to newer technologies. Along with updating old systems, your organization should be conducting regular security assessments to identify vulnerabilities and prioritize remediation efforts. This security assessment should also include a robust patch management process to help ensure timely updates. All of this is enabled through the allocation of sufficient funding to address technical debt and prevent further accumulation.

How as-a-Service Can Prevent Technical Debt
Without the right roadmap, getting a handle on your organization’s technical debt can seem like an enormous undertaking. To help simplify this modernization process for state and local governments, Red River provides an Everything as-a-Service (XaaS) model. XaaS is a subscription model for procuring IT solutions (hardware, software and services), tailored to each agencies’ preferences or requirements for features, functions, practice areas and even outcomes.

It directly addresses the issue of technical debt and liberates state agencies from upfront capital expenditures tied to hardware procurement. By adopting this new financial model and approach to modernization, agencies pay only for the technical capabilities they need, when theyneed them, leading to increased flexibility,  scalability and cost-efficiency.

This model supports dynamic allocation of networking resources, rapid deployment of new services, and accommodates the evolving demands of agency operations without the financial burden of owning and maintaining hardware. The shift contributes to the elimination of technical debt, as it replaces outdated systems with modern, up-to-date services that require less maintenance and can adapt quickly to evolving mission needs, keeping agencies at the forefront of innovation. To explore as-a-Service solutions, visit https://redriver.com/services/xaas