The Potential Behind the Technology Modernization Fund
At Marion Square, we always counsel our clients to "follow the funding" or more plainly stated, focus your sales efforts on programs that have identified funding, we have found that this will be your quickest path to revenue. With that thought in mind I wanted to provide some background and a quick overview of a high profile, funded program that technology companies should have on their radar, the Federal Government’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF).
The TMF was established as part of the 2017 Modernizing Government Technology Act (H.R.2227 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): MGT Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress) which was originally funded with $175M. In the 2020 budget as part of the American Rescue Plan, Congress provided an additional $1B in funding to TMF. The TMF fund is administered by GSA and program funding is approved by the Technology Modernization Board.
Specific technology focus areas for TMF include:
Modernizing high priority systems: investments in technology that modernize and support priority agency assets and services.
Cybersecurity: funding to address gaps uncovered in the SolarWinds incident. Specifically this may include identity, credential, access management and "zero-trust architecture".
Public Facing Digital Services: support the creation or modernization of digital services with dramatic benefits to increasing access, reducing fraud, and improving service delivery.
Cross-government collaboration/scalable services: support for public facing or agency-facing shared services, including technical infrastructure that can offer agency technology teams a scalable, secure foundation for rapid creation and modernization of digital services.
With the TMF program, Federal agencies submit proposals which address one of the focus areas highlighted above to the Modernization Board. Once the Board reviews and approves the proposal, funds are granted to the specific agency to complete the program. Researching which agencies are pursuing TMF funding is a great way for companies to identify programs tied to set timelines and more importantly potential funding.