Highlights from the Navy FY 2025 Unclassified IT Budget Request

In March, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget request, along with corresponding Information Technology (IT) budget data for the Civilian departments and agencies. However, there was a multi-week delay in the release of Defense-sector IT budget details by OMB and the Department of Defense (DoD).

In April, details of DoD’s fiscal year (FY) 2025 IT budget plans began to be released, beginning with the unclassified portion of their yearly budget request.

Total Navy Information Technology Budget

Details of the Navy’s unclassified IT budget are published on OMB’s IT Dashboard, providing some visibility into their planned IT investments, initiatives and priorities on the non-classified side. The Department of the Navy (DON) FY 2025 unclassified IT budget request is nearly $6.1B, which is $217M (+3.7%) above the FY 2024 estimated amount. Further, the Navy unclassified IT budget has shown some steady growth over the last four years, growing by $300-400M each year since FY 2021.

Operations and Maintenance vs. New Development Funding

When delving a little deeper at the breakdown of the Navy IT budget between Operations and Maintenance (O&M) activities and funding for new development activities, Development, Modernization and Enhancement (DME), we find that the main driver for the yearly top-line budget growth comes predominantly within the O&M portion of the budget, although the proportion varies between the two categories.

Over the last five years, DON IT O&M has grown by $1B (+24%), with the largest jump of +$429M coming from FY 2023 to FY 2024. By comparison, DON DME budgets have grown by 80% over the same period, from about $500M in FY 2021 to nearly $900M projected for FY 2025. For FY 2025, O&M is slated to increase $55M (+1.1%) while DME gets a $162M (+22.7%) increase from the FY 2024 level.

Request by Mission Support Category

Looking at the Navy’s IT budget by mission support category over the last five years reveals that most of the DON’s IT budget does not fall into clearly established enterprise IT categories, which is consistent across the DoD components, as activities around base and shipyard modernization as well as weapons systems tend to be identified outside of traditional IT categories.

When scanning the 564 budget lines in the Navy unclassified IT budget portfolio, many of the budget lines that are designated as Not Applicable under the mission support category address areas of IT management, infrastructure and communications – department-wide IT capabilities versus specific IT mission areas, such as financial management. This explains why this N/A category accounts for more than 56% of the aggregate DON IT budget over the last five years.

 

Top Ten FY 2025 IT Programs

The finer details of the Navy’s unclassified IT investment priorities and initiatives provide some indications of where they are planning to invest in FY 2025. Listed below are the ten largest unclassified IT initiatives across the DON for FY 2025, including observations about budget growth and their proportion of new development spending.

• Navy Enterprise Resource Planning: $616M (+$33M, 0.4% DME)
• Naval - Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul: $211M (+$136M, 100% DME)
• Navy Personnel and Pay: $164M (+$10M, 100% DME)
• Base Communications Office (BCO): $141M, (-$15M, 0% DME)
• Naval Ship Yard (NSY) and Regional Maintenance Centers' (RMC) Network Infrastructure: $136M (+$18M, 0% DME)
• Global Combat Support System-Marine Corps/Logistics Chain Management: $131M (+$11M, 0% DME)
• CNP CIOs Support: $130M (+903K, 86% DME)
• NAVY Maritime Maintenance Enterprise Solution: $123M (+$6M, 14% DME)
• Navy Information Technology (IT) Management, Oversight and Regulatory Compliance: $113M (+$26M, 2.2% DME)
• Navy Continuous Training Environment (NCTE): $111M (+$5M, 0% DME)

In aggregate, these largest ten budget line items account for nearly $1.9B (31%) of the Navy’s total $6.1B in unclassified IT budget requested for FY 2025, indicating that the majority of Navy’s unclassified IT budget is spread across the remaining 554 investment lines. In fact, the average funding level across all the Navy’s 564 unclassified IT initiatives is about $11M each, showing just how diversified that total $6.1B is across the department.