Federal IT Spending Up Nearly 2.7 Percent in Obama's New Budget
Federal IT spending would increase by about 2.7 percent under President Barack Obama’s budget, from an estimated $84.2 billion this fiscal year to $86.4 billion in fiscal 2016.
The budget requests $37.3 billion in IT funding for the Department of Defense, up slightly from $36.3 billion in fiscal 2015. The total includes estimates for DOD’s classified IT investments. Civilian agencies would see a roughly 2.5 percent boost in spending, from $47.9 billion to $49.1 billion in fiscal 2016.
Cloud computing and other provisioned services account for about 8.5 percent of the government’s IT spending today, according to the president’s budget proposal.
Other key funding areas include a 10 percent increase in cybersecurity funding, or $14 billion to expand the nation’s cyberdefenses, and $105 million to create and institutionalize digital service delivery teams at all CFO Act agencies, except the Department of Defense. These budding groups of digital experts would be an extension of the administration’s U.S. Digital Service, a team of innovators, entrepreneurs and engineers focused on improving citizen services. Funding would also be used to enhance U.S. Digital Service operations in support of the agency teams.
As part of the government’s ongoing efforts, the Obama administration will begin deploying Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) capabilities to select agencies this year, the budget notes. CDM tools and services will be expanded across government in 2016. The administration will also work with agencies to ensure the 2014 Federal Information Security Modernization Act, which passed Congress in December, is implemented effectively.
In addition to FISMA, implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) will be key to strengthening federal IT and building on success from initiatives such as data center consolidation and agile development, according to the budget.
Acting federal CIO Lisa Schlosser told reporters Monday that agencies will receive FITARA implementation guidance in the third quarter of this year, following the administration's outreach phase.
"FITARA has codified a lot of the different initiatives that we’ve launched over the past several years," Schlosser said. "We’ve already started the process of reaching out to various stakeholders to get the specific feedback on their understanding of FITARA, that's both within the government as well as with external entities."
