The US government shut down at 1201 ET on October 1, halting non-essential IT modernization and leaving cybersecurity operations to run on skeleton crews.
President Trump has made overhauling government technology a priority for his administration - at least sort of - since coming into office. The Trump-created, formerly Musk-helmed not-quite-a-government-department, DOGE, was given a broad mandate to modernize IT systems when it was stood up in January. In the process, the government's tech transformation team 18F was shut down allegedly under DOGE's pressure, and it has made closing IT deals more difficult. Likewise, a lot of IT staff have been laid off since the Trump team took the reins.
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Despite that, IT modernization projects have continued apace. The feds have signed numerous contracts that speed the entry of AI into the federal workforce, and have struck a growing number of deals with agencies transitioning to modern cloud infrastructure as well.
In short, whether there are IT personnel manning the help desk or not (or perhaps because many have been laid off), the Trump administration is still trying to get rid of outdated systems.
Toss a shutdown into the mix, however, and things start to get complicated.
"With the shutdown now underway, the immediate impact is clear: non-essential IT modernization projects have stalled, creating backlogs in areas such as infrastructure upgrades, cloud migrations, and system updates," Former Acting Social Security Administration Chief Information Security Officer Timothy Amerson told The Register in an email.
Amerson, who now works as a federal government security analyst at GuidePoint Security, told us that things won't get any better if this shutdown drags on, which it seems likely to do.
"Every day of delay compounds long-standing legacy challenges and drives up future costs," the former acting CISO said. "Beyond the immediate disruption, this shutdown risks long-term setbacks."
Beyond the immediate disruption, this shutdown risks long-term setbacks
"Contractors would face payment delays, modernization projects are frozen, and digital transformation momentum is stalling precisely when organizations need to be preparing for AI, quantum, and rapidly evolving cyber threats," Amerson added.
To make matters worse, it's entirely possible that the folks responsible for some of those "non-essential" IT modernization projects might not even come back when the shutdown ends.
The Trump administration made numerous threats prior to the shutdown to fire federal employees en masse if the government closed up shop due to a lack of funding, and Office of Management and Budget chief Russell Vought reportedly threatened to start those firings within a couple days when speaking to Republicans today. According to Amerson, cyber and IT staff are going to be hit particularly hard under the administration's plans.
"Vulnerability analysts, incident responders, and modernization staff are among the first affected, which erodes resilience and slows progress toward critical transformation goals," Amerson told us.
To be fair, not all of the big IT projects in the government are being suspended due to the shutdown. The Federal Aviation Administration's massive, underfunded plan to overhaul air traffic control systems is exempt from the shutdown, according to the Department of Transportation shutdown planning document. Other major initiatives at various agencies are also exempt, per contingency planning documents, but those are the exception: The practical nuts-and-bolts modernization plans - new cloud services, new hardware, etc - are getting interrupted thanks to politicians' refusal to work together on a solution.
Reduced capacity creates real gaps in defense at a time when threats are rising
Federal agency leadership, meanwhile, is following the Trump Administration playbook to the letter - meaning that they're laying all the blame on Democrats for the matter. The Department of Transportation, the only one to respond to questions for this story, described the shutdown as "reckless" and pinned all the blame on Democratic leadership who refused to acquiesce to Republicans' desire to eliminate healthcare tax subsidies from the funding bill with promises to negotiate those matters separately at a later date.
Elected officials, from Congress to the President, continue to get paid during the shutdown - unlike employees deemed essential for government operations, who have to continue to report without a guaranteed paycheck until the shutdown ends. Per furlough planning documents, some of those employees will be IT professionals essential to keeping the lights on.
"Cybersecurity monitoring, critical benefits systems, and national security networks continue to run, but they're being sustained with a fraction of normal staffing levels," Amerson explained. Beyond putting employees in a stressful situation, it's also a major security risk.
"Reduced capacity creates real gaps in defense at a time when threats are rising," the ex-SSA CISO said. Let's hope a foreign adversary doesn't have the forethought to capitalize on this situation. ®