
How the US Government Can Reduce IT Costs
Government agencies can narrow the gap to commercial best practices, optimizing their IT spending by choosing among five key strategies.
For the US public sector, it’s never been more critical to deliver robust, cutting-edge services to citizens. BCG empowers government organizations—and crucially, their people—to operate in transformative ways.
At its best, the US public sector inspires, opens the door to opportunities, and enables people to reach their full potential. Public sector leaders are challenged to bring out that best in an environment where budgets are tight, crises reorder priorities, and the underlying technology sometimes shows its age. They must find new ways of working: fostering collaboration, agility, and novel approaches to serving citizens.
BCG's US government consulting experts are helping organizations build the capabilities—both human and technical—essential for meeting vital, complex imperatives. Together, we can usher in a golden age for the public sector. Our unique combination of expertise, resources, and approaches empowers the US public sector:
Our US government consulting draws upon a network of experts—thought leaders in a full range of functions, technologies, and ways of working. We also call upon solutions and services that help US federal government, state, and local sector organizations realize a bold vision for responding to today’s—and tomorrow’s—most pressing needs and challenges. Among our areas of focus:
Our defense and security work covers a comprehensive suite of offerings, including acquisition excellence; maintenance, repair, and operations improvement; and sustainment modernization, to help clients achieve impressive outcomes.
Read our reportBCG’s public sector infrastructure team is the premier strategic advisor to infrastructure planners, owners, and operators. We help to deploy holistic solutions that deliver economic competitiveness and drive equity and sustainability.
Explore our capabilitiesBCG brings health care and functional expertise to help public sector leaders resolve their most complex problems, catalyze transformations and change, and use data and analytics to improve decision making and operational effectiveness.
Read our latest articleThe Future of Work is here. BCG has developed a proven approach that enables federal and state/local governments to drive organizational performance in the context of the fundamental shifts that have occurred in the public sector’s ways of working.
Read our latest articleBCG has the expertise needed to help public sector clients adapt their structure, processes, and governance to drive organizational performance. We have extensive people analytics capabilities and proven solutions to help organizations attract, engage, upskill, and retain the talent they need to deliver on their mission.
Read our reportBCG helps agencies implement large scale IT modernizations and new ways of working at scale while upskilling digital talent to meet today’s demands.
Read our latest articleOur digital consulting team helps our public sector clients build the government of tomorrow by creating bold new AI and digital solutions that help the government generate maximum impact for citizens.
Read our latest articleBCG’s acquisition and procurement work allows organizations to establish efficient operating models, strengthen supply chain resilience, and ensure that government agencies receive the best value for their spend.
Read our latest articleAt BCG, we focus on envisioning, designing, and implementing large-scale change and build new capabilities across organizations and improve services to citizens.
Read our latest articleEffective governance depends on a smooth transition process and seamless alignment. BCG’'s experts provide comprehensive resources to help leaders hit the ground running as they move into office.
Read our latest article
We’ve partnered with major government organizations to support—and spark—their transformations. The result: more efficient, more effective, and more innovative ways of working. Here are some examples.
IT transformation stabilized critical systems. After a US civilian agency's legacy IT architecture failed, leading to a critical loss of data, the agency needed to quickly identify and resolve issues with its unstable IT system. BCG developed an enterprise risk management framework to identify key areas for short-term intervention, and led a strategic development and planning process to support longer-term digitalization and modernization within the agency.
Creating an organizational structure for full operational capability. A new military space organization was tasked with standing up an organization structure within 15 months; the new organization sought to be leaner than its predecessor to enable efficiency and quick decision making. BCG helped deliver the full organization structure five months ahead of schedule, while eliminating about eight organizational layers from the previous organization model, with clearly defined roles for all billets.
Catalyzing state government solutions. The state of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island Foundation sought to catalyze new housing development and provide shelter for hundreds of residents displaced by winter shelter closings. BCG worked with multiple stakeholders to source sites and service providers for new shelters. The team also identified policy options that led to seven newly-passed pieces of legislation, including a new $30 million low-income housing tax credit.
Government agencies can narrow the gap to commercial best practices, optimizing their IT spending by choosing among five key strategies.
When buying rolling stock, rail operators should consider the full range of life-cycle costs—including maintenance, energy, and administrative expenses.
As the youth mental health crisis in the US continues to worsen, a new report from the National Governors Association, in collaboration with BCG, offers a path forward for state leaders.
As today's economic and security risks become more complex, interconnected, and disruptive, governments need to learn from the private sector and turn risk-management into a competitive advantage.
Through career training, coaching, and mentorship, BCG prides itself on supporting veterans and former military employees around the world.