Three critical federal challenges and a mission driven path to overcome them

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll do something I look forward to every year: I will step away from briefings, board rooms, and calendars and walk into a room full of veterans who are competing, healing, and building community through sport.

The VETSports Annual Awards Gala on June 6 is that room. And every year, it reminds me why I do both of the jobs I hold.

By day, I’m vice president of business engineering at CGI Federal, working with federal agency leaders on complex technology and mission delivery challenges. By evenings and weekends, and honestly, in the back of my mind during most briefings, I’m cofounder and president of VETSports, a national nonprofit supporting veterans’ physical, mental and emotional health through sport, fitness and community.

People sometimes ask how I hold both roles. The truth is I don’t see them as separate. Service didn’t end when I took off the uniform. It didn’t end after multiple deployments to Iraq with the 1st Infantry Division. It didn’t end during my final tour at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, helping wounded soldiers figure out what came next.

Service evolved. It found new forms. And it shows up in the work and in the community.

The thread connecting everything I do is simple: When government works well, the people it serves, including veterans, have a fighting chance. When it doesn’t, they absorb the cost. That’s not a policy argument. It’s something I’ve watched happen up close for a long time.

The view from both sides of the table

Before joining CGI Federal, I served in the Executive Office of the President, working with the federal CIO. There I oversaw  a $90 billion federal IT portfolio and providing direct oversight to agencies including the departments of Veterans Affairs and Transportation, the Small Business Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I’ve sat in the chair where technology investment decisions get made, where modernization plans get tested and where the gap between what systems can do and what missions require becomes painfully clear.

That experience shapes everything about how I work with agencies today. I’m not approaching conversations as someone who built a career selling to government. I’m coming in as someone who has lived the constraints, understood the pressures and watched both good and bad outcomes play out for real people.

What I keep coming back to is this: The biggest challenges federal agencies face are not new. They’ve been documented, studied and reported on for years. What has changed is the urgency. Budgets are tighter. Threats are more sophisticated. Workforces are contracting. And pressure to show that government programs deliver what they promise has never been higher.

With the VETSports Gala approaching, and the candid conversations it makes possible with various government officials in attendance that represent dozens of agencies, I want to outline what I believe are the three most consequential challenges facing federal agencies, and what I think it will take to move them forward.

Challenge 1: Fighting fraud, waste and abuse

Fraud, waste and abuse aren’t line items. They’re mission crises.

Federal agencies identified $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2025. Since 2003, that total has reached an estimated $2.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimates the government may lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, meaning the publicly tracked numbers are the floor, not the ceiling.

These aren’t abstract accounting errors. They’re payments made to the wrong people, for the wrong amounts, under the wrong conditions, and often in programs serving veterans, seniors, low income families and small businesses.

The hardest hit agencies are ones I know well. Medicare and Medicaid accounted for more than $85 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2024. The VA continues to face eligibility verification and billing oversight challenges. The Social Security Administration struggles with overpayment recovery and death data matching. Treasury and IRS continue to carry significant exposure.

This isn’t a problem of awareness. It’s structural. Agencies are trying to manage real time risk with batch processing systems, siloed data and manual workflows never designed for today’s scale.

You can’t detect fraud you can’t see. And you can’t see fraud when your data lives in 14 disconnected systems that update once a day.

The solution isn’t more after the fact audits. GAO has called for a permanent data analytics center of excellence for real time fraud detection and recommended applying improper payment oversight requirements to all programs paying more than $100 million annually.

The technology exists. What’s needed is prioritization and organizational will.

Challenge 2: Cybersecurity in an energized threat environment

During my time overseeing the federal IT portfolio, cybersecurity shifted from an annual planning exercise to a daily operational reality of how to harden our systems and processes rapidly, while keeping up with the pace of service to our citizens. (I was there during the Office of Personnel Management data breach). That pace has only accelerated.

In fiscal 2025, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)  added 238 high risk vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and assessed more than 43,000 vulnerabilities for federal agencies. At the same time, threat actors targeted critical infrastructure and federal networks, probing edge devices for espionage and data theft.

Federal systems hold veteran health records, tax filings, benefits histories and military personnel files. A security breach is also a breach of trust.

The Defense Health Agency manages TRICARE data for millions, a prime target of cybercriminals. It requires continuous monitoring and rapid zero trust adoption. The VA holds some of the most sensitive data in government. Across the civilian enterprise, CISA’s Federal Civilian Executive Branch Operational Cybersecurity Alignment (FOCAL) plan lays out key action areas, including building resilient cyber architecture.

Too many agencies still treat cybersecurity as compliance instead of operational readiness. Zero trust isn’t a vendor buzzword. It’s a federal mandate.

On top of that, staffing shortages mean agencies are protecting increasingly complex environments with stretched teams. The answer isn’t just technology investment. It’s smarter prioritization of human attention and automation.

Challenge 3: The persistence of legacy systems

About $83 billion, or ~79%, of planned federal IT spending for fiscal 2025 went toward operating and maintaining existing systems, not modernization.

GAO identified 11 legacy systems most in need of modernization across 10 agencies. Many use outdated programming languages, operate with known security vulnerabilities or lack modernization plans.

Legacy systems resist integration, limit visibility and can’t support the AI powered fraud detection, identity verification and predictive analytics agencies must adopt.

Nowhere is this more urgent than at the VA, which is preparing to launch a major enterprise infrastructure modernization effort. This effort is about more than technology. It’s about whether the VA will have the backbone it needs to serve Veterans reliably.

The VA supports more than 9 million enrolled veterans. Its systems process disability claims, healthcare reimbursements, education benefits and home loan guarantees. When systems fail, people wait longer, get paid incorrectly or fall through preventable gaps.

Modernization at this scale isn’t lift and shift. It requires security by design, interoperability, strong data pipelines and real organizational change.

Across the CFO Act agencies, a 2025 executive order requires consolidation of core financial systems and migration to Treasury approved marketplace solutions. Treasury’s FM QSMO and HHS’s grants management standardization efforts point in the right direction, but execution will determine whether this generation of modernization succeeds.

How CGI approaches these challenges

The problems above aren’t unsolvable. They require purpose built technology, deep federal domain expertise and disciplined execution.

CGI’s Momentum financial management platform supports automated payment controls, Inspector General reporting workflows and real time data analysis to prevent improper payments before they occur. CGI holds FM QSMO designation and has experience across VA, Treasury, Commerce and civilian agency financial operations.

CGI Federal’s cybersecurity practice aligns with CISA’s FOCAL framework and zero trust architecture requirements. Its Atlas360 platform delivers enterprise wide asset visibility, a prerequisite for effective defense.

CGI’s Sunflower asset management suite and Momentum platform were designed specifically for federal processes, audit requirements and compliance environments. That foundation is what makes real AI adoption possible.

Modernization success is 50% technology and 50% change management. CGI brings both.

Why the gala table matters

The hardest conversations in government, which are typically about what’s broken, what’s working and what it takes to move forward, rarely happen during a procurement. They happen when people engage as peers.

The VETSports Gala brings government leaders, industry partners, veteran advocates and military families together with no RFPs and no pitches, just shared purpose.

In my experience, that’s where real first steps happen. Conversations reframe problems. Introductions open doors. Shared commitments make hard work feel worthwhile.

The challenges ahead, notably improper payments nearing $200 billion annually, nonstop cyber threats and legacy infrastructure that limits mission execution, won’t be solved by a single agency or vendor. They’ll be solved through sustained commitment by people who understand the technology and the mission.