Department of Homeland Security FY 2024 Budget Request Highlights

In mid-March the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget request with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ranking among the highest-funded civilian departments.

Total Discretionary Funding and Priorities

The proposed FY 2024 budget provides $60.4B in total discretionary budget authority, a 1% reduction from the FY 2023 enacted level. An additional $20.1B for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) is provided for disaster response, recovery and resilience. The budget proposes an additional $4.7B for a Southwest Border Contingency Fund to respond to migration surges.

Funding highlights include:

• Supplies $535M for CBP border security technology at and between ports of entry and $40M to combat fentanyl trafficking and disrupt transnational criminal organizations.
• Includes $165M for the Management Directorate to support design and construction of a third permanent Joint Processing Center along the Southwest border.
• Allocates $136M for the procurement and deployment of new towers plus $38M for tower sustainment for the newly consolidated CBP Integrated Surveillance Towers (IST) program. An additional $66M is for the Common Operating Picture (COP) program to improve information management and sharing.
• Allots $70M for TSA’s Checkpoint Property Screening System (CPSS) program to address capability gaps and to reliably and efficiently detect new and evolving threats.
• Includes $6M to create a Customer Service Experience Office, as directed in Executive Order 14058, Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery To Rebuild Trust in Government.

DHS Information Technology Budget

The FY 2024 IT budget request for DHS is $10.0B in total IT funding allocated across its component agencies, directorates and offices. After a 12% increase from FY 2022 to 2023, the FY 2024 aggregate IT budget request represents a 0.9% decrease from the FY 2023 enacted level. This budget data does not include spending on classified programs or those categorized as National Security Systems, which OMB began excluding from their IT budget data with the FY 2019 budget cycle.

Within this total request the new budget allocates over $1.3B – more than 13% of the total $10B IT budget – to new Development/Modernization/Enhancement (DME) spending for FY 2024. This DME amount is nearly 3% more than FY 2023 and $291M (+27%) more than FY 2022. (See table below.)

Noteworthy IT Programs

Looking at the details of DHS’s IT budget uploaded to OMB’s IT Dashboard provides some insight into their IT investments, initiatives and underlying priorities. Here are the five largest IT initiatives across DHS for FY 2024, including observations about budget growth and their proportion of new development funding.

• CBP - Non-Intrusive Inspection (NII) Systems: NII technologies support the detection and prevention of contraband from entering the U.S., while having a minimal impact on the flow of legitimate commerce. At $469M for FY 2024, NII receives $197M (+73%) more than the FY 2023 enacted level. The investment consists of 65% Development, Modernization and Enhancement (DME) funding.
• Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM): CDM provides continuous monitoring, diagnosis, and mitigation capabilities to strengthen the security posture of the federal civilian networks. The $421M requested for this investment is $4M (-0.9%) below the FY 2023 enacted level and consists of 77% DME funding.
• CISA - Vulnerability Management (VM): VM Assessments services identifies the critical and high vulnerabilities in stakeholder networks and systems for mitigation. For FY 2024 this program receives $224M, including a $5.4M (+2%) increase from FY 2023. This investment is 100% Operations and Maintenance (O&M).
• CBP - Integrated Surveillance Towers (IST): The IST investment procures, deploys, operates and sustains persistent surveillance tower capability across the U.S. northern and southern borders. At $216M for FY 2024, IST receives $134M (+164%) more than the FY 2023 enacted level. The investment consists of 63% DME funding.
• CISA - Threat Hunting Integrated Services (THIS): Cyber Defense Operations (CDO) proactively identifies, detects and responds to the most significant cyber threats in federal civilian executive branch, critical infrastructure and partner networks. The $212M requested for this investment is $14M (+7%) above the FY 2023 enacted level and is 100% O&M funding.

As is typical within each new budget proposal the DHS component IT budgets are a mix of winners and losers. For FY 2024, the mix is slightly weighted toward the winner column with eight of the fourteen components receiving budget increases from FY 2023. Among the largest components Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are seeing 3%, 10% and 8% IT budget increases, respectively.

Of the six components seeing reductions, only the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Departmental Management and Operations (DMO) are seeing double-digit percentage reductions heading into FY 2024. Both components saw budget increases in FY 2023 – CISA grew by 23% and DMO grew by 6%, so the trimming in FY 2024 may be somewhat cyclical in nature. The other two components that are among the five with the largest IT budgets, Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA), see only very modest reductions from FY 2023.

One other benefit of the new budget release is that we get to see the most current data on the enacted budget levels for the current fiscal year, i.e., FY 2023, which runs through September 2023. It is noteworthy that every DHS component except the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) saw an IT budget increase for FY 2023. (Science and Technology got a modest $353K (+1%) bump on a $26M budget.) That points to potential contract opportunities in FY 2023 while companies begin considering potential plans for FY 2024.