Highlights from the Energy FY 2025 Information Technology Budget

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the FY 2025 budget request in March including the Information Technology (IT) requests for the Department of Energy and other civilian agencies. The OMB also publishes a corresponding annual IT budget/portfolio on the Federal IT Dashboard.

This article provides a glimpse to the Department’s IT spending trends and plans for FY 2025.

Energy FY 2025 IT Budget 

Energy’s FY 2025 $5.5B IT budget accounts for 11% of the agency’s $51B Discretionary Budget. This 2.3% increase over FY 2024 continues steady growth over the past five years with an overall 76% increase since FY 2021.

The Department's FY 2025 IT request includes a historic $1.9B investment for critical and emerging technologies such as biotechnology and biomanufacturing, quantum information sciences, exascale high-speed computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The agency also requests $8.6B for the Office of Science to support the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act grant programs and $971M for cybersecurity. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Development, Modernization and Enhancement (DME) vs Operations and Management (O&M) funding

A portion of each year’s IT budget is allocated for Operations and Management (O&M) initiatives and DME funding for new development. Combined, these investments have risen by 249% since FY 2021.

While O&M investments historically outpace DME, the $438M initial investment for a Davis-Bacon Labor Standards electronic payroll and compliance LCPTracker software application in FY 2023 resulted in a 154% spike in DME from FY 2022 to 2023. O&M increased by 23% ($616M) that year. (The application did not include the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).)

 A five-year comparison shows O&M growth at 59% (+$1.35B) and DME at 189% (+$497M). For FY 2025 Energy’s O&M budget dipped to $3.6B (-8%) while DME remained flat at $800M.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Investments by Mission Support Category

The IT Portfolio also provides a detailed breakout of the budget based on mission categories. However, the DOE does not always clearly separate its IT investments into one specific category. Instead, the agency categorizes these as Not Applicable (N/A), combines investments, categorizes some “other” or just does not categorize them. The N/A and “other” categories include investments for infrastructure, communication/network services, IT management, engineering and technical services and business applications. These represent 97% of the IT budget over the past five years. Combined funding for Financial Management, Human Resources Support, Travel/Transportation and Procurement accounts for 1%, with 2% of investments uncategorized during the same period. 

Top Ten FY 2025 IT Investments

A more in depth look at the 404 line items in Energy’s FY 2025 IT Portfolio provides insight into the agency’s major investment plans for next year. Of these, the continued S3 S4 LCPTracker application is the only DME investment.

• S3 S4 LCPTracker: $468M (+$20M) 5% DME
• NNSA Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) M&O Non-CIO End User – Direct: $209M (+$5M) 0% DME
• NNSA Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) M&O End User: $197M ($9M) 0% DME
• SC Office of Science M&O: $182M (+$4M) 0% DME
• Information Management and Chief Information Officer (IM) IT Security and Compliance: $162M (-3M%) 0% DME
• NNSA LLNL M&O Non-CIO End User – Indirect: $115M (+$3M) 0% DME
• IM (OCIO) IT Management: $91M (no change)
• SC Office of Science M&O Application: $84M (+$1M)
• SC Office of Science IT Security and Compliance: $84M (+$2M) 0% DME
• NNSA LANL M&O Applications: $80M (+$4M)

Combined investment for these represents $1.7B (30%) of the total IT budget for FY 2025. Energy allocates the remaining $3.7B of IT funding among the remaining 395 programs. The average 11% funding for those provides a clear representation of the agency’s diverse mix of IT investments.