Cloud Computing in the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act

Passed just before Christmas, the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act, otherwise known as the “Omnibus” bill contains billions in funding for a wide variety of federal programs. This includes funding for information technology (IT), although the language in the bill often does not provide the granularity required to know how many dollars are slated exactly for technology. The bill does contain a few specific references to IT, however, and cloud computing in particular. Today’s post discusses the funding related to cloud computing investment.

Language in the bill concerns cloud investment at three federal agencies, including two in the civilian sector and one in the Department of Defense (DOD). The civilian sector agencies are the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the General Services Administration (GSA).

At the USDA, Section 702 of the bill grants the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to “transfer unobligated balances of discretionary funds appropriated by this Act or any other available unobligated discretionary balances … to the Working Capital Fund (WCF) for the acquisition of property, plant and equipment and for the improvement, delivery, and implementation of Department financial, and administrative information technology services, and other support systems necessary for the delivery of financial, administrative, and information technology services, including cloud adoption and migration.”

Authorizing the transfer of funds to the WCF is interesting because for many years Congress has struggled with allowing agencies to leverage WCFs for investment in IT. WCFs have been subject to abuse in the past and yet their use has long been recommended for investment in cloud computing which enables the purchase of capabilities based on need. WCF funding provides the payment flexibility that many agencies want to use for cloud and the USDA has been one agency over the last five years granted the ability to use its WCF for cloud investment. That trend continues in FY 2023 with the authority granted by Congress in this bill.

The provision for the GSA is much more specific. After authorizing $74.6M in discretionary funding for the Office of Inspector General, the bill makes clear that up to $3.0M of this funding can be made available for IT “enhancements related to implementing cloud services, improving security measures, and providing modern technology case management solutions.”

Industry partners at the GSA might want to keep an eye open for a cloud-based case management capability procurement to be competed by the OIG in the next several months. Multiple case management capabilities are already FedRAMP approved so expect the desired solution to be one of those. The list of approved capabilities can be found on the FedRAMP Marketplace.

Turning now to the DOD, there are two mentions of cloud computing in the documentation for Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) funding. The first concerns the Air Force’s Aerospace Sensors program. It will receive $7.0M in FY 2023 to improve the reliability of combat cloud communications systems. The combat cloud, generally speaking, is a system of interrelated sensor, network, and analytics technologies used in combat missions.

The U.S. Space Force (USSF), meanwhile, will see a reduction of $4.8M in RDT&E funding for the Space Systems Prototype Transitions program. This is due to an inadequate justification filed by the USSF for the digital engineering of an interconnected cloud-based ecosystem.

Agencies will of course use some of the funding they receive to invest in cloud even though these investments are not specifically called out in the budget document.