Government Business Development | Government | Technology | Resources and Insight | Contracts | 1 Min Read
This figure is not totally accurate because estimates for IT investments cannot reflect IT spending on classified projects by intelligence agencies, or IT spending on projects that include a lot of IT work, like space and research & development projects, but are not classified as such. Even IT components of weapons systems, such as authentication and encryption systems, could end up being classified as something other than IT.
So, when President Obama’s FY 2014 budget request includes $82 billion overall for IT spending, in reality, government IT spending could be much higher. At a House Oversight Committee Hearing, Joel Willemssen claimed that IT spending could actually be higher than $100 Billion. What this means is that despite apparent modest growth in IT spending, it could actually be growing much more drastically than it appears. “The fact that reported IT spending rose about 2 percent in this most-recent budget request, after two years of effectively non-growth, shouldn’t be given too much significance,” former Commerce Department CIO Alan Balutis said, because in reality there is a lot more IT spending going on than we realize and thus many more IT opportunities than meets the eye.
