February 2009

Big IT projects for agencies tucked inside stimulus package
By Bob Brewin

One of the biggest winners among federal agencies in the mammoth economic stimulus bill President Obama signed on Tuesday is the State Department, which will receive $290 million to strengthen information security and modernize its networks.

The 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act directed State to work with the U.S. Agency for International Development to develop IT systems that will increase efficiencies and eliminate redundancies, including consolidating backup facilities. The $290 million bestowed to State represents about a third of its annual IT budget in fiscal 2008.

While much of the IT funding in the package goes to the private sector via federal agencies in the form of grants to prime the economy, including $6 billion for rural broadband communications systems, the act also allocates billions of dollars for systems within federal agencies, a sum that represents a large portion of the government's $70 billion-plus annual IT budget. In addition, Congress typically appropriates funds for large IT projects over years, but the stimulus package dumps huge sums in one year. The Social Security Administration, for example, received $500 million for a new National Computing Center, an amount that is nearly half the agency's $1 billion annual IT budget.

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