Big Data Technology in Civilian Agencies’ FY 2025 IT Budget Requests

This week continues my ongoing analysis of identifiable technology areas in the FY 2025 civilian IT budget with a look at big data. The analysis is based on a keyword search of the requested budgets for programs that are leveraging big data technology in one way or another. As was the case for my last post on artificial intelligence, the budget numbers provided are for civilian agencies only.

Total Program Budgets, FY 2023-2025

Here is the data for total program budgets.

As we can see, although total program budgets leveraging big data technology are on a slight roller-coaster, they will reach their highest level ever in FY 2025. The rise is attributable to growth at several agencies, including Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and especially at Homeland Security, where the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is requesting nearly triple the amount in FY 2025 it received in FY 2024. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is also hoping to slightly raise its investment from $375M received in FY 2024 to $382M in FY 2025. 

Top Ten Civilian Agencies by Big Data-Related Program Budgets, FY 2023-2025

Ranking big data-related program budgets by agency, provides more detail on the data presented above.

The National Institutes of Health anticipate using big data tech the most at HHS; while at Commerce the leading agency by requested budget is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ($771M total), not the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with $745M total. As for the U.S. Treasury, the biggest user of big data tech is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with a total of $957 requested.

Top Ten Civilian Agencies by Big Data-Related Program Budgets, FY 2025 Only

Narrowing down the requested budgets to FY 2025 yields the following.

This view of the data confirms the three-year trend identified above, with the exceptions being that the Departments of Justice and the Interior edge out the Treasury/IRS. Seeing DOJ on this list is not surprising. Seeing Interior is, particularly when data on the bureaus is filtered. It shows that the programs requesting budgets that leverage big data technology reside mostly in the Departmental Offices that administer Interior’s mission.

Final Thoughts

Wrapping up, the data clearly shows that federal agencies have become more comfortable with advanced analytics, data mining, and other big data approaches over the years. Artificial intelligence/machine learning is a sub-area of big data technology, but the numbers for requested program budgets using AI/ML are not part of the data shown here. I would expect the totals shown above to grow even more in the years to come as using analytics and dashboards have become standard parts of every agency’s program and budget management approaches.