President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday to improve national cybersecurity in an effort to combat future cyberattacks. The order follows the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange cyberattacks impacting federal agencies as well as the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack that caused states of emergency in several states.

A September 2020 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) rounded up mission critical IT modernization projects at various federal agencies. The report was created based on Congressional interest in how high-risk IT projects were faring during their implementation. The report, GAO says, is an effort to "identify essential mission- IT acquisitions across the federal government and determine their key attributes."

For the first time since the scorecard’s creation, none of the 24 federal agencies reviewed through the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard received a failing grade. The scorecard requires an agency’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) to report to agency leadership and Congress on the agency’s IT modernization efforts.