On August 30, the Trump administration unveiled an ambitious plan to upgrade the federal government’s cyberdefenses by shifting digital functions to the cloud and prioritizing security upgrades for the government’s most important systems.  In this plan, which in many ways continues the cyberefforts of the Obama administration, the White House’s American Technology Council (ATC) justified this large-scale approach due to what it characterized as the federal government’s longstanding less-than-adequate cyberefforts in the face of years of mounting digital threats.

The plan, grounded in the President’s May 2017 Executive Order (EO) 13,800,   tasked  the Director of the ATC to coordinate the preparation of a report to the President from the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce (Commerce), regarding the modernization of Federal Information Technology (IT).  In accordance with EO 13,800, a draft IT Modernization report was submitted to the President last week.

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