As agencies work to meet IT-modernization and mission-efficiency goals, three key focus areas have emerged for the coming year. These areas will shape the way government acquires and implements technology.
Focus on Enterprise IT
Siloed technology implementations have long hampered the ability of government to work across groups within an agency, and even more so to work across agencies and federal departments. Piecemeal buying of technology has created a lot of duplication and been an inefficient use of taxpayer money.
In 2025, the General Services Administration (GSA) launched OneGov, a federal government–wide acquisition strategy that enables agencies to buy commonly used technology products and services through pre-negotiated, enterprise-level agreements. GSA has negotiated government-wide pricing with over a dozen companies, including Oracle, Elastic, Google, Adobe, Salesforce, DocuSign, OpenAI, Box, Anthropic, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and Meta. These agreements treat the government as a single customer and allow different agencies to buy a technology at one standard rate and service agreement.
The Department of Transportation (DoT) used OneGov to facilitate a cost-efficient shift to Google Workspace, part of the department’s “1DOT IT” strategy to modernize its IT infrastructure for all 55,000 employees.
Recruiting talent
Once the technology is procured, the government faces a real issue with having the right people to implement and manage the solutions. To fill technology talent gaps, the administration has launched government's latest tech hiring program, Tech Force. This partnership between the Office of Personnel Management and private industry allows people to work in government for two years and then transition to a private-sector job after that term is up. For the two years, participants report directly to agency leadership, working as part of a specific agency. They receive technical training, engage with industry leaders, and work closely with senior managers from companies partnering with Tech Force.
The first cohort of recruits will be roughly 1,000 individuals currently working in the private sector in roles from early-career data scientists and engineers to engineering managers. Participants will be hired into a variety of agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Energy, the General Services Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and more.
Tech Force is a new twist on previous technology hiring programs, including the U.S. Digital Service and U.S. Digital Corps, which both aimed to bring in tech talent to move agency IT modernization projects forward. Tech Force differs in that participants are hired directly into a specific agency, rather than serving as consultants that work across multiple agencies and projects.
Operationalizing AI
With the technology acquired and the people in place, agencies can look to shift their use of artificial intelligence (AI) from pilots and experimentation to production-level capabilities that are used to drive missions forward. The Meritalk Federal CIO Forecast found that AI was the top named priority for agencies in 2026. Additionally, Gartner found that more than 60% of government organizations are expected to prioritize business process automation by 2026.
Agencies will look to embed AI and automation into core mission workflows to power case management, benefits processing, cybersecurity operations, fraud detection, and more. AI can also help offset staffing shortages by utilizing AI agents to conduct rote tasks.
In the same spirit of enterprise IT adoption, agencies are prioritizing platform-based automation that integrates with enterprise systems, with the goal that it becomes part of daily workflows, supporting workforce productivity and complying with emerging policy and oversight requirements.
To stay up to speed with federal IT modernization efforts, check out these resources:
- Reassessing Modernization Priorities (February 11, 2026; webcast) – As federal IT leaders plan for 2026, many are taking a fresh look at their portfolios—reevaluating risk, reestablishing momentum on paused initiatives, and sharpening their focus on resilience, security, and mission impact. This session will look at how to align modernization efforts with emerging requirements, including Zero Trust, incident response expectations, and FedRAMP® compliance.
- EMERGE: Modern Government (February 12, 2026; Washington, DC) – Advanced technologies including agentic AI, AI software development, and automation are creating opportunities for leaders to harness innovation in holistic ways that make government more efficient, effective, and responsive. Join government and industry leaders to explore how smarter technology solutions create connected systems and tools for mission delivery.
- Fed Tech Priorities 2026 (February 18, 2026; Washington, DC) – Agencies face a critical inflection point for modernization. From advancing cybersecurity and AI governance to operationalizing cross-agency goals, technology priorities are shaping mission delivery like never before. The Fed Tech Priorities Summit will bring together senior administration officials, congressional leaders, and agency technology executives to unpack the White House’s FY26 agenda, including modernization funding, ONCD’s cybersecurity roadmap, and AI implementation challenges.
- Digital Transformation Summit (April 22, 2026; Washington, DC) – Outdated legacy programs and applications have long been an impediment for mission speed. But the officials featured at the 2026 Digital Transformation Summit are trying to change that. These high-ranking, impact-driven individuals are setting the government up to not just catch up to commercial industry but to harness its tools and form long-lasting partnerships that will ensure the U.S. has the capabilities to best its near-peers on the global stage.
- Data to Decisions: How Agentic AI Is Transforming Government (white paper) – Agentic AI is a major evolution in artificial intelligence, moving beyond simple input-output models to systems that can interpret instructions, plan tasks, break them into steps, execute workflows, and adapt autonomously. For government, it offers big advantages. Though adoption will require attention to security, trust, and oversight, the trend is clear—agentic AI is poised to transform government operations.
- Mission-Ready Modernization (white paper) – This paper highlights how explainable AI, edge resilience, and data agility are reshaping modernization strategies across defense and civilian operations. By aligning modernization with mission outcomes and adapting proven private-sector models, agencies can evolve incrementally without risking operational integrity.