IT Spending Up 7% (and Counting)

Most information technology executives were counting on President Obama to goose federal tech spending when he took office. The reasoning goes this way: Technology helped fuel his run for president during the campaign and he's basically a technophile, which leads to his belief that technology can improve government performance.

According to the IT portion of the budget in the analytical perspectives volume the administration released this week, it looks like that speculation just may be spot on. The White House pegged federal IT spending at $75.8 billion for fiscal 2010, up 7.2 percent from fiscal 2009. That's one of the biggest increases since right after 9/11 when the government dumped billions of dollars more into IT systems to fight terrorism. In fiscal 2009, the $70.7 billion spent on IT was a respectable 6.4 percent increase from fiscal 2008. But IT spending was pretty much dismal before that, at least from the perspective of IT contractors and agencies.

But that's not all. IT spending in fiscal 2010 is likely to be even more, the Obama administration reported. From the analytical perspectives:

New directions for federal information technology in 2009, as well as final determinations on investments funded in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,

mean that estimates for spending on IT systems over 2009-2010 will likely change as firm plans are made to address the Administration's goals of greater openness in Government, wider participation by citizens in government, and a more collaborative, cost-effective federal IT enterprise.

That pretty much means you count on spending in 2010 to go up.