The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans on plowing ahead in the coming years with ongoing initiatives to migrate to cloud-based platforms and improve cybersecurity, according to its just-released Strategic Plan Report for Fiscal Years 2022-2026.
Major IT-related themes in the agency’s forward planning hew to existing goals, but the latest planning report fills in some new details about the agency’s plans.
The FTC said it plans on optimizing information management by using a host of strategies which includes upgrading and supporting the transformation of legacy systems into cloud-based technology platforms, in line with the agency’s Information Resource Management (IRM) Strategic Plan.
“The FTC must continue to address the challenges of a constantly evolving cybersecurity landscape,” the strategic plan says. “Information and information systems must be protected from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction in order to ensure data integrity, confidentiality, and availability in the face of increasing cyber threats,” the agency said.
The plan also updates some of the metrics the FTC will use to measure its own technological performance, as well as its overall performance in policy functions.
“The three strategic goals, each with three strategic objectives, remain from the last plan, though they have been refined with clearer language and new and updated metrics,” stated FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “These refinements reflect the lessons learned from prioritizing and measuring our performance under the previous strategic plan.”
The agency’s specific goals in IT-related areas include:
- Increasing the percentage of IT systems hosted outside of the FTC’s data center;
- Getting a good annual score on the FTC Cybersecurity Index;
- Meeting project milestones for developing an agency email records schedule and associated email capture and management process; and
- Meeting project milestones for developing and implementing an agency-wide approach for managing Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).
