The latest on 2012 Federal IT Spending Trends
Posted on Mon, Jan 30, 2012 @ 03:30 PM
The 2012 Federal IT budget request is approximately $80.9 billion, of which 52 percent is civilian and 48 percent is defense. In 2011, the IT budget was $78.8 billion.
Despite slight increases in IT budget requests almost across the board on the civilian side, the primary budget driver is cost savings. Agencies are emphasizing value measurement, process improvement, elimination of redundancy and duplication, adoption of new technologies to improve operations and alternative services to the OEM to cut costs.
Teleworking and mobile computing are among the most important new initiatives being considered by the federal government. Mobile Internet and email use will surpass desktop Internet and email use by 2014.
Three Areas of Increased Spending
Analysts from Deltek see three growth areas for the IT contracting industry in fiscal 2012:
Cloud computing -- While adoption has been slow, a federal "cloud first" initiative announced by the Office of Management and Budget will push agencies to move into the cloud.
Deltek’s Kevin Plexico says, “The government is always resistant -- nobody wants to be the first to fail -- but the economics of it just make too much sense. It's an obvious way to drive down costs and stretch funding, and agency leaders tell us over and over again that they're going to push into the cloud in 2012."
Cloud computing and virtualization are emerging trends in federal IT spending, with $20 billion of the proposed $80 billion 2012 budget potentially targeted to cloud computing migration. Some 75 percent of civilian agencies are expected to be utilizing cloud technology in some capacity by the end of 2012.
Data center consolidation -- Contractors have been hearing about the data center consolidation effort for a long time, Plexico notes, but it will pick up speed in 2012. "They're forced to make some rather significant spending reductions, and cutting this footprint will help." This, he notes, will feed the move to the cloud.
The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) promotes Green IT by reducing the overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers. The initiative also reduces the cost of data center hardware, software and operations, improves overall federal IT security and increases the use of more efficient computing platforms and technologies.
Cybersecurity -- While other opportunities center around streamlining and helping the government cut spending, Plexico said, cybersecurity efforts are purely an expense, but one they can't avoid.
"There is a government hiring freeze that specifically exempts IT security professionals," he explains. "This is one of the few areas where agency heads are being told 'spend what you need to spend.' The cost of an embarrassing security lapse would just be too high for them."
The following are great sites to track trends and spending:
IT Dashboard - The IT Dashboard is a website enabling federal agencies, industry, the general public and other stakeholders to view details of federal information technology investments.
usaspending.gov - Provides the public with information about how their tax dollars are spent.
DATA.gov - The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
RECOVERY.GOV - This website was created under the Recovery Act to show the American public how Recovery funds are being spent by recipients of contracts, grants, and loans, and the distribution of Recovery entitlements and tax benefits.
