IT Priorities Snapshot: Department of Justice

As previously noted with the Department of Commerce, discussion of agency priorities typically focuses on investments with high total dollar value or key strategic impact. These criteria can be useful for discussions around contracting opportunities, but they may assume disproportionate levels of spending will be used to acquire goods and services from government contractors. By eliminating the portion of spending dedicated to supporting government staff, funding levels more closely reflect the planned role for contractors.

At the Department of Justice, the top ten investments by total requested IT spending varies slightly from the set of programs yielding the highest values of contractor addressability. There are several investments that rank near the top for both categories, but one investment from the top five based on total spending falls lower when addressability is taken into consideration. These ten investments combined account for over $827 million in contractor addressable spending.

Another area of interest for the contracting community is spending associated with technology development, modernization, and enhancement (DME). Although this portion of funding often drives new opportunities, in recent years, agencies have increasingly leveraged operational spending to fund upgrades and ongoing requirements. (This is the case with funding for DOJ Telecom, for example.) Digging into the top five investments by anticipated DME spending, several significant targets for contracting opportunities become apparent. A few of the investments from the above contractor addressable analysis also include sizeable portions of DME. This overlap casts a different light on investments, highlighting where there’s new spending coupled with a high reliance on contractor support.

Not surprisingly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) features heavily in these top development and modernization investments, which target mission-oriented capabilities as well as infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. The DOJ’s FY 2016 budget outlines $216 million in development and modernization funds for the FBI. IT investments at the FBI are 86% contractor addressable on average, representing the potential for over $957 million in business for industry in FY 2016. As the DOJ (and especially the FBI) continues to advance its abilities to collect and leverage data, technology investments will stress infrastructure modernization, standardization, security, and performance optimization. The push for enterprise solutions as well as the demand to analyze and share information across law enforcement organizations will drive requirements for system interoperability. Similarly, increasingly complex data management requirements will underscore the need for comprehensive security controls.