State investing in info sharing

Fiscal 2002 budget

The State Department is requesting $332 million to improve its information technology infrastructure in the foreign affairs community.

The Bush administration's fiscal 2002 budget request, released Monday, includes $332 million for IT investments "that will improve interaction and information sharing among agencies in the foreign affairs community and modernize secure communications capabilities," the budget document says.

Secretary of State Colin Powell told the House International Relations Committee last month that the funds are important to help State improve its ability to communicate.

"These dollars will allow us to modernize our secure local-area network capability, including e-mail and word-processing," Powell testified last month. "Likewise, they will allow us open access channels to the Internet, so that our people can take full advantage of this enormously important new means of communication and research."

Among the other IT items in the State Department's fiscal 2002 budget request: $243 million for ongoing refreshment and maintenance for department PCs and LANs. $14 million to streamline and integrate administration applications. $97 million to continue deploying a modernized classified IT infrastructure to 95 overseas posts. State is spending $8 million in fiscal 2001 deploying the IT infrastructure to 37 overseas posts.