The Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) projects civilian IT budgets will grow an average of 3 percent over the next five years.
Much of this growth will happen after fiscal 2011, said Meredith Luttner, an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, who helped compile the GEIA report.
“Once we see the effect of a new administration take hold, we do project a substantial increase in the civilian budget,” from an estimated $36 billion in 2008 to $38 billion in 2011 and $42 billion in 2013, Luttner said.
Growth for the remainder of the Bush administration will be flat as agencies wrap up the president’s e-government initiatives, Luttner said.
The Health and Human Services, Treasury and Veterans Affairs departments are expected to lead the growth in IT spending among civilian agencies in the coming years.
At HHS, which manages the Medicaid and Medicare programs, IT spending is projected to surge 7 percent from 2007 to 2008. Medicare and Medicaid will take up almost half of the department’s $5.8 billion IT budget for 2008, GEIA projects.
Treasury and Veterans Affairs will each see about a 6 percent growth in IT spending, the trade association forecasts. VA’s spending is largely trained on delivering medical services to veterans, while Treasury is modernizing the tax system.
While it is difficult to project what an unidentified president will focus on, chief information officers interviewed by GEIA officials for the study said civilian IT is focused on citizen services — such as access to government grants, benefits and health care, Luttner said.
Congress favors these programs as much as national security-related IT programs because they have a tangible benefit to constituents, she said.
The next administration is expected to focus more on domestic programs as the war in Iraq winds down and the dollar value of emergency supplemental budgets for the war decreases. Those supplemental budgets helped fuel a 7 percent annual growth rate in the Pentagon’s IT spending between 2003 and 2008, said Payton Smith, another Booz Allen Hamilton associate who worked on the study.
After 2008, Defense will see a slight decline in IT spending, from $38.1 billion in 2008 to $37.7 billion in 2013, the GEIA study projects.
Some of the decrease in Defense IT spending is due to the department’s need to replenish equipment lost in the war, Smith said.
One big factor that could upend these projections is Congress. In fiscal 2005 and 2006, civilian agencies received $1.5 billion to $3 billion less than they requested for IT while Defense agencies got $4 billion more than requested, the report says.
Overall IT spending will increase 1.4 percent annually over the next five years, down from the average annual growth rate of 6 percent over the past five years, the study says.
Most of that growth will be focused on modernizing and maintaining systems already in place, Luttner said. The percentage of IT funding for new IT projects has been decreasing at a steady pace since 2005. In 2008, development, modernization and enhancement projects will account for 31 percent of the anticipated $74 billion in IT spending requested in the president’s 2008 budget. Those numbers were slightly higher in 2006, at 33 percent, and in 2007, at 32 percent.
Last year, the yearlong continuing resolution prohibited civilian agencies, except the Homeland Security Department, from starting up new programs, Smith said.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Elise Castelli
Quelle/Source: Federal Times, 22.10.2007
