White House budget document shows IT spending winners, losers

Most of the information technology budgets for the 20 largest federal agencies would increase slightly under President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal, while five agencies are pegged for cuts, some of which are deep, according to White House briefing documents obtained by Nextgov.

The Defense Department would have the largest increase from fiscal 2010, jumping 6.5 percent to $36.5 billion from $34.3 billion, according to the documents. Overall, Defense accounts for 45 percent of the $79.4 billion federal information technology budget the president requested for fiscal 2011.

The Commerce Department is taking the biggest hit, dropping from a fiscal 2010 budget of $6.6 billion to $2.4 billion. But its 2010 IT budget was an anomaly, and the fiscal 2011 request is about $1.35 billion below the fiscal 2009 budget. Commerce officials were not available to comment on why the drop was so steep. That decrease accounts for most of the cuts from the $81 billion fiscal 2010 government IT budget.

The other four agencies singled out for reductions in IT spending were the Homeland Security Department, which asked for a $6.4 billion IT budget, down nearly 2 percent; the Interior Department (from $1 billion in fiscal 2010 to $980 million in fiscal 2011); the Labor Department (from $610 million to $560 million); and NASA (down from $1.68 billion to $1.6 billion). The Veterans Affairs Department essentially was unchanged at $3.3 billion.

NextGov staff