PSC Finds Increase in Federal Use of Shared IT Services

The Professional Services Council has found that the use of shared information technology services by federal agencies has jumped 2 percent each year since 2017, FedScoop reported Monday.

PSC studied data in the federal IT dashboard and found that the departments of Agriculture, State, Treasury and the General Services Administration account for 61 percent of the $1.9B spent this year on shared IT services.

“This really builds on the emphasis of the federal government in terms of expanding shared services and the quality services management offices, the QSMOs, that have been stood up,” Steve Vetter, a federal strategist at Cisco, said Monday during PSC’s Federal Market Forecast Conference. 

Federal spending on platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings rose 8 percent, while spending on software-as-a-service dropped 21 percent. The shift toward PaaS and IaaS could be associated with the agencies’ move to telework as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Overall the pandemic really created a tipping point for modernization and digital transformation,” said Josh Verville, business development executive at Perspecta.