Technocrat | April 29, 2019: IT Budgets Rise and Fall

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IT Budgets Rise and Fall

It’s a busy season for the Internal Revenue Service, as the agency deals with approximately 59.2 million tax returns — 95 percent of which were filed online — since March 1, according to an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The IRS will have even more on its plate once the agency’s six-year IT overhaul plan goes into effect. The IRS just released a modernization strategy that will enter a pair of three-year phases, beginning this year. Each phase will focus on different areas with outdated systems, including taxpayer services and IRS operations.

IT modernization is a hot topic in government. That’s why the Modernizing Government Technology Act was established, authorizing up to $250 million for the Technology Modernization Fund, commonly known as TMF, in each of fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Ultimately, however, the fund only received $25 million in the fiscal 2019 budget agreement.

TMF-approved projects are in the early stages across the government. But some agency leaders say such projects are picking up speed. The Energy Department and the Department of Agriculture, for example, are in the process of updating and replacing legacy systems under TMF, which essentially serves as a loan fund.

Bloomberg Government found that governmentwide spending on IT development, modernization, and enhancement is expected to drop in fiscal 2020 compared with 2019. In fiscal 2020, agencies are budgeting $14.5 billion toward modernization, a decrease from the $15.6 billion in fiscal 2019.

However, some data remains incomplete because of the Office of Management and Budget’s decision to withhold information on some projects related to IT infrastructure, IT management, and cybersecurity (as previously reported). BGOV’s federal market analysts Chris Cornillie and Laura Criste break down the latest spending numbers in this week’s exclusive story.

Agencies are also trying to step up their game when it comes to collecting, processing, and using data. Federal CIO Suzette Kent feels “hopeful” that agencies will soon have better guidance to help them. But more on that below, so keep reading!

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Get Smart

“Many of the programs with the largest IT budget increases for fiscal 2020 are also the largest IT programs across federal agencies.”

—Chris Cornillie and Laura Criste, federal market analysts with Bloomberg Government

Read more in this week’s exclusive from Bloomberg Government.

Big Contracts

SEC Pulls Solicitation for $2.5 Billion IT Contract

The Securities and Exchange Commission has to rethink the on-ramp solicitation for its $2.5 billion enterprise IT contract. A recent protest argued that the solicitation skewed in favor of companies that have previously worked with the SEC, putting the entire contract at risk. Read more.

JEDI Delay Helps Amazon Score Another Contract

The Pentagon’s $10 billion JEDI cloud contract has had several delays — one of which has worked in favor of Amazon Web Services. The U.S. Transportation Command extended an expiring commercial contract with AWS, saying the JEDI delay made it necessary. Read more.

Eye on Security

Why Zero Trust Is Part of NOAA’s Strategy

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an advantage when it comes to supercomputing and dealing with massive amounts of data. The agency wants to tackle cybersecurity using a Zero Trust model, but the process is still developing. Read more.

Military’s Cyber Teams Get New Critical Tools

The Air Force introduced the first iteration of the Unified Platform, a system that will provide U.S. Cyber Command teams with critical new tools. Cyber Command is developing its own operations infrastructure, separate from the National Security Agency. Read more.

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In the Cloud

Federal Courts Consider Cloud-Based Learning System

The Federal Court System plans to replace legacy technology that supports human resources education programs with an updated system that will allow court employees to access training and other applications from the cloud. It would serve 20,000 subscribers. Read more.

DISA Uses Cloud Success to Help Other Agencies

The Defense Information Systems Agency learned a lot as it moved applications to milCloud 2.0, an internal cloud environment with commercial offerings. Now it’s using that knowledge to help non-military Pentagon agencies migrate to the cloud by December 2020. Read more.

Strategy & Leadership

Federal CIO Kent Says Data Strategy Coming Soon

The White House is getting ready to share its plan for managing data within and across agencies, in addition to guidance for recently passed legislation, federal CIO Suzette Kent said at a recent event. The Federal Data Strategy should be out “within the next 30 days,” she said. Read more.

Why the Government Can’t Do IT Alone

Federal agencies like the Defense Department and NASA used to be leaders in launching new tech, but not any longer. According to industry experts, the government should draw on smaller innovators and seek out larger private partnerships for R&D efforts. Read more.