The Freedom Project
Modernization decisions you can defend.
Independent advisory for government, health systems, and institutions — before spend is committed.
Government · Healthcare · Education · Enterprise
Baltimore · Founder: former U.S. Department of Defense · former AWS · former Fortune 500 Engineer
The cost of waiting
Modernization risk does not stand still.
Doing nothing is still a technology decision. Aging or poorly understood systems can consume budget, constrain security remediation, increase outage exposure, and make new technologies harder to govern.
But replacing technology without understanding the environment can create another kind of risk. The goal is not to modernize everything. It is to know what should change, why, and what happens if it does not.
Operating and maintaining just 11 critical federal legacy systems
GAO found that 11 of the federal government's critical legacy systems collectively cost approximately $754 million annually to operate and maintain.
Seven operated with known cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Four contained unsupported hardware or software.
U.S. Government Accountability Office
GAO-25-107795 — Information Technology: Agencies Need to Plan for Modernizing Critical Decades-Old Legacy Systems
View sourceGlobal average cost of a data breach
IBM and Ponemon Institute reported a record-high global average breach cost of $4.99 million in 2026.
Organizations extensively using AI and automation in security reported $1.93 million lower breach costs than organizations using none.
of consumers will not buy from organizations they don't trust with their data
Trust directly impacts purchasing decisions. When consumers lose confidence through breaches, poor data handling, or compliance failures, revenue follows.
For hospitals, schools, and government agencies, the equivalent risk extends beyond revenue to patient safety, enrollment decisions, constituent confidence, and institutional reputation.
of breaches in Verizon's 2026 DBIR began with exploitation of software vulnerabilities, making vulnerability exploitation the leading initial access vector.
48% of breaches involved ransomware.
Verizon 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report
View sourceof respondents experiencing a significant, serious, or severe outage said their most recent outage cost more than $100,000.
1 in 5 exceeded $1 million.
Uptime Institute Annual Outage Analysis 2025 (Full Report)
View sourceof organizations said their privacy programs expanded because of AI. 93% plan to allocate more resources to privacy and data governance.
Only 12% describe existing AI governance committees as mature and proactive.
Cisco 2026 Data and Privacy Benchmark Study
View source"Legacy systems can become more expensive to maintain, more exposed to cybersecurity risks, and less effective in accomplishing their intended purpose."
U.S. GAO, GAO-25-107795
Not everything old needs to be replaced.
A stable system that still meets mission, security, resilience, cost, and support requirements may be the right system to keep.
Sometimes the answer is replacement. Sometimes it is hardening, segmentation, better monitoring, a new integration pattern, or replacing a dependency.
The decision should come from evidence — not from a vendor's preferred platform.
Modernization itself carries risk.
GAO warns that incomplete modernization planning increases the likelihood of cost overruns, schedule delays, and project failure.
The Freedom Project works in that upstream decision window — before architecture becomes a procurement commitment and before assumptions become implementation costs.
U.S. GAO, GAO-25-107795
Work
Independent advice before the platform is chosen.
Modernization advisory
Current-state assessment, sequencing, lifecycle considerations, risk, and a written recommendation.
Systems architecture
Target-state architecture across integration, identity, data, cloud/on-premises, operational dependencies, and transition.
Governance, risk, and compliance
IT and AI GRC, residual risk, control design, authorization evidence, governance accountability, and defensible decision records.
From decision to delivery
Where the scope fits our capabilities, The Freedom Project can execute defined implementation work directly.
For larger or specialized modernization programs, we can work alongside internal teams or independently evaluate prospective implementation partners — including architecture, staffing, schedule, cost assumptions, migration strategy, security controls, resilience, and vendor dependencies.
The objective is the same: ensure the solution that gets implemented is the solution the organization actually intended to buy.
Why The Freedom Project
Independent by design. Technical by background. Accountable to the decision.
Independent of the sale
The Freedom Project does not resell the platforms it evaluates and is independent of reseller programs and platform incentives. Recommendations follow the environment, constraints, mission, and evidence — not a product quota.
A Freedom Project advisory engagement does not require a downstream implementation contract.
Operating experience
Founder: former U.S. Department of Defense Technical Director / Systems Engineer with 11+ years of experience. Security compliance work spanning 20+ national security systems. Experience includes SDLC, authorization packages, NIST / FISMA alignment, FedRAMP-aware environments, zero-trust work, and classified and air-gapped environments.
AWS / enterprise experience
Former AWS Enterprise Account Engineer. Experience includes third-party software evaluation across GovCloud, AWS Marketplace, enterprise SaaS and platform environments, cloud architecture and integration.
Principal-led and procurement-ready
Principal-led delivery. Scope written before work begins. Concrete architecture / assessment / decision deliverables. SAM.gov UEI and CAGE listed in the capabilities statement. Professional Liability & Cyber insurance through Hiscox. Public security policy, coordinated vulnerability disclosure process, RFC 9116 security.txt.
Our recommendations are not contingent on receiving the implementation contract.
Where we are the right implementation team, we can execute defined scopes. Where another team is better suited to the scale or specialization required, we can help evaluate that team and protect the customer's technical interests.
Platform
AIM
The evidence behind the decision.
AIM turns The Freedom Project's modernization methodology into a structured decision and governance platform.
It brings current-state understanding, organizational constraints, architecture, lifecycle cost, procurement evidence, risk, and decision history into one governed modernization record.
AI governance eventually becomes an architecture problem: organizations cannot meaningfully govern what AI may access, influence, or automate if they do not understand the systems, identities, data, APIs, authority, and dependencies underneath it.
NIST AI Risk Management Framework 1.0 emphasizes contextual understanding, documentation, risk measurement, transparency, accountability, and continual management across GOVERN, MAP, MEASURE, and MANAGE functions.
Understand
Current-state architecture, dependencies, constraints, security and operational context.
Decide
Target-state options, lifecycle cost, risk, procurement considerations, and the evidence supporting a recommendation.
Defend
Decision records, approvals, AI-assisted work, provenance, implementation changes, and sustainment history.
ARC
Need a public site that can survive the first meeting?
ARC is a 72-hour sprint for professional services, trades, and operators who sell to institutions. Fixed scope. Same standard as the rest of the firm.
Before you modernize, know what you're changing.
Understand the architecture, dependencies, lifecycle cost, security implications, and operational risk before committing to the platform or implementation.
Request a briefing
Thirty minutes with executive sponsors exploring a modernization initiative or an independent assessment.
ScheduleCapabilities statement
UEI, CAGE, NAICS, and a printable one-pager for contracting officers and primes.
View statementExplore AIM
See how AIM structures modernization decisions from assessment through sustainment.
Launch AIM