The shutdown exacerbates the capital’s IT problems
By Rebecca Heilweil | Published: 2025-11-04 10:00:00 | Source: Fast Company – technology
Amid a historic shutdown, the technology that keeps the government running has largely continued to function. Official websites online. Internal programs mostly work. Security experts continue to monitor potential cyber threats.
But as the lockdown continues for 35 days, the situation may become more dire, several current and former government officials said. Fast companyThis threatens the systems and teams that help support tax filing, healthcare systems, airports, and more
Without new funding from Congress, government IT offices can, in the short term, maintain a number of essential office workers and rely on other funding sources, such as, for example, profits from selling services to other federal agencies to stay online. Technology teams often rely on contractors to operate their platforms, and sometimes these contracts are paid upfront, providing an additional source of support. (These resources vary by agency.)
But experts have warned that such temporary measures will only last for so long. As the shutdown continues, much-needed updates to federal technology systems will be delayed, making them more difficult to operate. Tech workers will start looking for jobs in the private sector instead.
Keep in mind that the US government is already having difficulty managing its technology. Federal agencies are frustratingly lagging behind in upgrading websites, improving software, and providing internet user experiences that aren’t terrible. The government also suffers from a chronic shortage of technology workers, including… Tens of thousands of cyber security Professionals. Many people who leave the private sector to work in government technology take pay cuts, often on the assumption that, at the very least, they will enjoy better job security in the public sector.
Now the shutdown is slowing government technology projects and making the prospect of a federal job less attractive. This poses a significant threat to the stated goals of the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, which include attracting technology talent, improving government programs, and increasing the US government’s use of artificial intelligence.
“Consistent operations are critical to maintaining a stable and effective workforce across all industries, not just the federal government,” said Jenny Mattingly of the Partnership for Public Service. Fast company. “When employees face financial uncertainty because their paychecks are delayed during a government shutdown – which is on top of significant workforce reductions this year – it undermines workplace morale and hampers their ability to perform effectively.”
“Combined, these factors foster conditions that make it difficult to attract and retain skilled technology professionals, hindering technological progress and modernization efforts in the government,” she added.
How closures affect government technology offices
As elsewhere in government during the shutdown, federal IT offices are having to select a small number of workers deemed “essential” to keep programs running, one current government official said. Fast company. These include people who focus on keeping applications running and secure. But this approach has drawbacks, because it is relatively easy for a federal agency to lose important employees to furlough while keeping contractors assigned only to “less important tasks.”
Agencies will sometimes maintain a list of employee leave codes and funding sources, which identifies whether they are exempt from closure, supported by another funding source, or another funding source. The government technology official explained. There may also be a separate list of people who are subsequently recalled from leave to work without pay, even though they are immediately relieved. The official said that the administration appears to be exempting more people from the lockdown than usual in order to mitigate the impact of the government shutdown. Fast company.
A former Treasury Department official said agencies are trying to anticipate closures and government plans. Federal agencies do not receive all of their funding from congressional appropriations, and sometimes they have other funds they can use to keep IT offices open.
But as the shutdown continues, agencies must prepare for more drastic action. About 25 days after the latest government shutdown, the Treasury Department’s Office of Information Technology began considering shutting down technology platforms used across its employee base, the official said.
Projects designed to modernize legacy systems or introduce new technology are also affected. said the former chief information officer at a federal agency Fast company During the last two government shutdowns, employees focused on essential operations, infrastructure, and other forms of support were exempt from the shutdown. But leave was granted to anyone working on developing the new technology
The current shutdown “exacerbates delays in critical modernization efforts” and creates “serious impacts” that will grow, the source said. Likewise, a State Department technical official said that although they expected the agency to be fine — given the agency’s reliance on contractors — shutting down the agency could be “draconian” when there are problems with an “old” government application.
There are also underlying cybersecurity concerns. In theory, the government retains the ability to withdraw staff in order to put “all hands on deck,” one official said. But there can still be risks. For example, during this shutdown, this administrator’s team learned of a security vulnerability that needed to be fixed immediately. While the team was implementing the fix, it was unable to communicate with furloughed IT staff who could explain how the update would affect other agencies’ systems.
On the one hand, employees do not check their emails or, in general, do not conduct government activities, which means they are less likely to fall victim to phishing attempts, the sources said. Fast company. On the other hand, a shutdown may make the federal government a bigger target. David Nesting, a former White House modernization expert, warned that not paying people could also pose a risk in counterintelligence, as it becomes easier to offer employees money in exchange for information.
Lockdowns may keep tech workers away
Government technology workers, including those who focus on information technology, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, typically earn less than they would in the private sector. Senior positions indicated in the General Schedule, the main pay guideline for federal workers, have a base of about $162,000; Top tech salaries can be several multiples of this. Federal agencies have also placed a strong emphasis on requiring employees to return to the office. However, government roles have always had one big advantage: job security
But the closures are damaging the government’s reputation as a stable workplace. As in the private sector, the most experienced and capable experts are the ones who can find work elsewhere first, Nesting said.
“There’s definitely a risk that cybersecurity workers, out of necessity, or just tired of the way they’re being treated, decide that now is a good time for them to consider a career move,” Nesting said. “This creates a significant challenge for agencies trying to retain cybersecurity talent and convince potential new hires that this won’t happen to them too in a year.”
said Kshmendra Paul, former government technology officer and public administration expert, speaking in his personal capacity Fast company The past few administrations have seen a deterioration in the federal budget process, which requires both houses of Congress and the president to meet together to approve funding for government activity, making shutdowns more likely. Each closure further damages employee confidence.
“Lockdowns destroy morale. It increases cynicism, it increases skepticism about change. It creates change initiatives that are aimed at improving cybersecurity, improving information sharing, improving the citizen experience, managing government resources better, reducing fraud and waste. “Much harder,” Paul said. “It’s already difficult to start them in government, but then it’s like you’re working in a pool of molasses.”
The early deadline for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 PM PT. Apply today.
(Tags for translation) Doji
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
