Intel community IT spending exceeds that of many agencies

The 17 agencies within the intelligence community (IC) spend more money on enterprise IT systems alone than all but three cabinet-level departments requested for total IT spending in fiscal 2013.

The $52.6 billion "black budget" for fiscal 2013, passed to the Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, contains an agency-by-agency comparison of enterprise IT systems that cost $4.7 billion in fiscal 2013.

That sum total, led by the $1.6 billion the NSA will spend on enterprise IT systems, is more than every  other department and agency total IT spending request for fiscal 2013 with the exceptions of Defense ($32.6 billion), Homeland Security ($5.6 billion) and Health and Human Services ($7.1 billion).

Collectively, intelligence agencies spend more on enterprise IT systems than the second-largest federal agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs ($3.3 billion), spends on total IT, and far more than other agencies, including NASA ($1.4 billion), the Department of Agriculture ($2.6 billion) and the Justice Department ($2.6 billion).

Detailing what intelligence agencies spend on enterprise IT systems is not an absolute indicator of how much they spend on IT. But because enterprise IT systems make up a large portion of IT expenditures, the comparison to total IT spending within civilian agencies is  a good indicator of the relative relationship. 

Among intelligence community components, the largest spenders on enterprise IT systems are: NSA, $1.6 billion; National Geospatial-Intelligence Program, $1 billion; General Defense Intelligence Program, $833 million; National Reconnaissance Office, $536 million; Central Intelligence Agency, $529 million; Office of the Director of National Intelligence, $168 million; Justice Department, $40 million; Department of Defense Foreign Counter-Intelligence Program, $16 million.