By Asad Khan, VP of Innovation at Makpar
Federal IT transformation has advanced in waves for more than a decade. Agencies have moved systems to the cloud, strengthened cybersecurity, and delivered new digital services. Yet legacy systems and data silos have limited that progress.
Federal leaders are under pressure to reduce costs, eliminate redundant contracts, strengthen cybersecurity defenses, and improve service delivery. These priorities, reflected in initiatives like GSA’s OneGov Strategy, reinforce that enterprise consolidation is the next major phase of federal IT transformation.
A 2025 analysis from the GAO shows that consolidating fragmented IT systems can yield more than $100 billion in cost savings. This report reinforces consolidation as a strategic modernization priority, not an afterthought.
The Trump Administration set enterprise consolidation as a digital transformation priority. As such, agency leadership is no longer deciding whether consolidation will occur, but how to execute it well.
Across government, fragmented identity systems, network operations, and policy enforcement drive higher costs, friction, and risk. Addressing this requires more than incremental improvement. Agencies must build a unified foundation that supports secure, efficient service delivery and enables AI through scalable infrastructure, consistent identity controls, and reliable data flows.
Enterprise Identity Management as Foundation
Identity governs access to systems, data, and collaboration tools, yet many agencies still manage it at the bureau level. Separate directories and authentication platforms increase overhead, require multiple credentials, and limit visibility, while manual HR and IT coordination slows onboarding and offboarding and introduces risk.
An enterprise identity approach creates a shared identity layer that centralizes provisioning, standardizes access policies, and integrates HR workflows. This reduces duplication and costs while strengthening oversight and insider threat detection.
It also improves collaboration by enabling consistent access across mission areas and supporting Zero Trust and future initiatives, resulting in stronger security, simplified compliance, and a better employee experience.
Consolidating Network Operations
If identity is the front door, network operations support everything behind it. Many agencies still run fragmented architectures, monitoring tools, and service desks across field offices, each with different vendors and models. Even after cloud migration, legacy perimeter security persists, routing traffic through inefficient proxies instead of Zero Trust architectures built for cloud environments.
These environments are costly, with large agencies spending tens of millions annually on systems that deliver limited performance and visibility. A consolidated approach standardizes configurations, unifies architectures under a Zero Trust framework, and centralizes service desks, reducing duplicative contracts, eliminating overlapping tools, and improving security consistency.
It also enables AI and advanced analytics through standardized connectivity, controlled access, and reliable data flows, reducing supply chain risk and supporting more coordinated, future-ready infrastructure planning.
Addressing Historical Challenges
Consolidation has been limited by organizational autonomy and technical complexity. Agencies value independence, but integrating legacy systems remains difficult, especially with sensitive data. Federal policy can set direction, but it cannot overcome cultural resistance alone.
That is changing. Federal leadership has made clear that an AI-ready government cannot operate on a fragmented IT foundation. Consolidation is now a prerequisite for meeting mission demands within fiscal constraints.
Most prior efforts focused on systems rather than the data they manage. Without addressing underlying data, consolidation falls short. To succeed in the AI era, agencies need trusted data flows, authoritative sources of truth, and consistent identity-driven authorization. Without unified governance, consolidation simply scales fragmentation.
This approach has proven effective. In a large civilian agency’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program, prioritizing identity and authorization data over tools enabled clearer answers to a core Zero Trust question: who is on the network and should they be there. Anchoring consolidation in shared data models and enterprise identity reduces sprawl while enabling AI-driven operations.
The path forward is clear: define data architecture principles and a Zero Trust roadmap, map identity and data flows before systems, pilot shared models, and execute phased integration without disrupting mission delivery. Agencies that move quickly will lead, while others may struggle to support evolving demands.
The Strategic Payoff
Enterprise consolidation delivers three core advantages beyond traditional cost savings.
First is cost efficiency. Beyond contract rationalization and shared services, agencies can deploy scalable, enterprise frameworks aligned to priorities such as Zero Trust, enhanced logging, and AI governance. These approaches reduce duplication while creating a foundation that evolves with mission needs. The GAO’s estimate of more than $100 billion in potential savings highlights the scale of the opportunity.
Second is improved security and reduced AI risk. A consolidated identity control plane centralizes telemetry, standardizes policy enforcement, and enables consistent logging, strengthening visibility and improving the ability to detect and respond to cyber and AI-enabled threats.
Third is operational agility. Consolidation enables faster onboarding and offboarding, accelerates ATO timelines, and supports quicker application deployment, allowing agencies to adapt to changing mission demands with greater speed and control.
Agencies that move forward with enterprise consolidation will reduce risk, improve resilience, and deliver more secure, efficient services.
About the Author
Asad Khan is the VP of Innovation at Makpar, a technology firm that helps federal agencies transform how they operate through cloud, data, cybersecurity, and increasingly secure AI solutions.
