What’s New This Week:
Big Spenders
After dragging on for more than a month, the partial government shutdown ended (temporarily) on Friday. But federal workers were already struggling and everyone from banks to cellphone companies offered some type of assistance to those affected. Even GoFundMe launched a campaign in partnership with restaurants to serve free meals to furloughed workers in Washington, D.C. See for yourselves under the hashtag #ChefsForFeds.
At the center of the deadlock was the battle over allocating $5.7 billion to President Donald Trump’s border wall. Trump finally conceded and signed a three-week stopgap measure to reopen government. He warned, however, that the government could close again on February 15 if an agreement isn’t reached on border wall funding.
There is some good news on the federal information technology front. In fiscal 2018, the government spent an all-time high of $64.7 billion on IT contracts. That’s a 9.5 percent increase from the previous year, according to analysis by Bloomberg Government. The Defense Department grew its IT contract expenditures by more than 12 percent last year, while civilian agencies saw a 6.6 percent increase. BGOV’s Chris Cornillie explains the significance of these numbers in this week’s exclusive story.
Do you know who else is spending big? Google and Facebook—both of which have dedicated millions to lobbying the U.S. government. Google disclosed in a quarterly filing that it spent a record $21.2 million on lobbying efforts in Washington last year, and Facebook spent $12.62 million. That’s more than ever before, as regulatory scrutiny of these companies continues to grow.
Let’s go back to the shutdown for a minute. Cornillie notes that although government spending in key tech markets like cybersecurity, cloud computing, and AI is expected to rise in 2019, federal agency leaders face many challenges when funding is on the line. “Millions in IT contracts are at risk every day” during a shutdown, Cornillie said. For now, there’s a resolution. Let’s see what happens in three weeks.
Meanwhile, here’s what else is happening in the world of government tech.