Lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously advanced a bipartisan bill today to reauthorize and reform the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) in a 42-0 vote.
The TMF’s congressional authority expired in December, leaving its leadership unable to make any new TMF awards.
The Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Reform Act would reauthorize the TMF and its governing board until 2032, ensuring the TMF adheres to original congressional intent and remains a force for years to come in helping to jumpstart federal agency IT modernization projects.
The bill would also establish a Legacy Federal IT Inventory, a new oversight tool that would help Congress monitor how the federal government is tackling the problem of legacy IT and evaluate the effectiveness of the TMF in funding related projects.
Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, co-sponsored the bill. The late Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., was the original co-sponsor of the legislation.
TMF, run by the General Services Administration, was created in 2017 to provide funding to federal civilian agencies for technology modernization projects.
Congress provided the fund with $1 billion under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. As of December 2024, the TMF reported allocating more than $1 billion across 63 projects at 34 agencies.
The committee also adopted an amendment from Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., which would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to report every two years on the extent to which funding dollars are used for prioritized legacy IT projects.
“The goal of my amendment is to ensure that TMF funds are being used to modernize critical federal legacy IT projects,” Walkinshaw said. He added that this additional reporting directive would allow Congress “to better understand whether the TMF is achieving its stated goals and how effectively the federal government is modernizing its critical IT systems.”
Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., supported Walkinshaw’s amendment, saying the GAO reporting requirement would help Congress evaluate which priority modernization projects are funded.
“As a result, Congress will have additional information to assess the extent to which TMF is meeting congressional intent,” Comer said.