Now We Know: 2008 IT Request Up 2.3%
By Daniel Pulliam | Friday, May 25, 2007 | 04:18 PM
By Daniel Pulliam | Friday, May 25, 2007 | 04:18 PM
With the passage of the final fiscal 2007 spending bills earlier this year, the Office of Management and Budget could finally figure out exactly how the proposed fiscal 2008 information technology spending compares with fiscal 2007.
The answer: The fiscal 2008 spending request of $66.4 billion represents a 2.3 percent increase from fiscal 2007, according to an updated annual report. That's a bit lower than OMB's 2.6 percent guess when the budget was released in February. That continues a trend over the past few years of ever smaller increases in IT spending. The Bush administration asked for a 3 percent increase in fiscal 2007.
The details for the IT spending are normally released with the annual budget submission in February, but agencies were unable to produce the information needed for the report due to the delay in completion of the fiscal 2007 appropriations process.
Comments
It's time to go "horizontal!"
As IT funds are becoming harder to come by, Congress needs to make it easier for multiple agencies to "share" their IT funds with multi-agency procurements of IT hardware and software that meet narrower, but broader needs.
This "horizontal" style of bundling, as opposed to the traditional "vertical" procurements that seek complete packages of hardware through end-user software, would allow similar departments of several agencies to get their needed solutions (e.g., contracts management) from vendors who can deliver secure systems across a slice of agencies.
Why subsume the valid needs of specialized departments to the convenience of the procurement office? It can be just as beneficial to bundle similar needs across multiple agencies--and save at least as much time and money--as any verticle procurement. But it has a better chance to actually produce a purchase that the staff really NEED.
HoriSlant | Wednesday, May 30, 2007 | 09:17 AMABOUT THIS BLOG
Allan Holmes on what's happening and what's being discussed in the world of federal information technology.
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