IT Funding Boosts throughout DOJ’s FY 2023 Budget Request

Last week, the Biden Administration issued the anticipated FY 2023 budget request, with billions of dollars in increases across both civilian and defense agencies. The Department of Justice joined the list of civilian agencies with bolstered budgets, requesting $37.7B in FY 2023, a nearly 13% increase over FY 2021. Note: Due to the timing of final FY 2022 appropriations, investment levels in the FY 2023 budget are compared to 2021 funding.

DOJ’s FY 2023 program changes largely reflect priorities in national security, law enforcement, upholding the rule of law, and protecting civil rights, to name a few.  Nearly every DOJ bureau saw increases in FY 2023 topline budget numbers to advance these priorities, save for the BOP. The FBI’s budget increased 6% to $10.8B in FY 2023, while USMS, DEA, and the ATF increased 6%, 4%, and 17% to $4.0B, $2.5B and $1.7B, respectively.

Likewise, the DOJ total IT budget increased from $3.9B in FY 2021 to $4.3B in FY 2023, with additional funding primarily seen under the FBI (+10%) and the DEA (+32%). In fact, DOJ’s discretionary budget calls out significant increases throughout the bureaus for IT-centered programs, particularly those related to cybersecurity, updating outdated IT infrastructure, data management, and accommodating a remote environment. Many of the program changes reflect ramifications from events such as the Russian-Ukraine conflict (i.e. fighting cybercrime) and COVD-19 (i.e. transitioning to remote work). Below is a breakdown of increased funding found among these IT headers from DOJ’s FY 2023 budget request:

Cybersecurity

• JIST: an additional $41M for continued remediation of the SolarWinds incident, overall strengthening of overall DOJ cyber defense and resilience, and additional personnel to ensure enhanced cyber capabilities are implemented throughout DOJ
  • The JMD Cybersecurity Initiatives investment in the IT portfolio increased form $9M in FY 2021 to $143M
  • JIST is dedicating $500K to improve supply chain risk management
• FBI: an additional $37M to update monitoring tools in several enterprise systems and investments to advance cyber posture and meet federal mandates. Includes specific investments enhancements to protect FBI data:
  • Centralized Logging: $25M
  • Blue and Red Teams: $4M
  • Tool Modernization: $3M
  • Forensic Analysis: $2M
• FBI: an additional $52M to fight cybercrime, including better equipping the agency to work with allies to impose risk and consequences on cyber adversaries. Increased funding will focus on Cyber Threat Identification; Analysis, and Attribution; Cyber Threat Intelligence Platform; and Incident Response.  
• USA: an additional $15M to pursue malicious cyber actors behind illegal interception of data, network compromises and infringement on intellectual property
• DEA: an additional $11M to address Cybersecurity Maturity Model improvements and assist field divisions pursuing cyber investigations. Funding will also reduce response times across security operations, minimize system downtimes and establish a recovery plan
• BOP: an additional $66M in the IT portfolio for the BOP Security program, which covers all of the agency’s IT security investments
• EOIR: an additional $6M to protect the privacy of EOIR information and data
• OIG: an additional $4M to improve cybersecurity posture including deploying secure web gateways, SDNs and the creation of a multi-cloud strategy, deploying cyber software tools, and implementing a forensic virtualization platform

IT Modernization

• ATF: an additional $22M to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN), and $15M for the National Tracing Center modernization
• USA: an additional $27M for the eLitigation System modernization to address growth and complexity of data in civil and criminal prosecutions
• USMS: an additional $12M to update critical IT infrastructure, particularly in the transition of infrastructure from on-premises hardware to the cloud
• ATR: an additional $39M to update IT infrastructure, including updating existing systems to sustain current and future increased levels of investigations

Data Management and Analytics

• FBI: an additional $17M for data analytics and technical tools to improve  reliability, security, and bandwidth across its network infrastructure; provide operations and maintenance support; and keep up with innovative enterprise technical solutions
• DEA: an additional $31M to create the DEA Information Sharing Center (DISC), which will serve as a central platform for operational data collection, sharing and analytics among the DEA and local law enforcement agencies
• ATR: an additional $2M to improve data analytics capabilities in complex corporate criminal cases and enforcement

Remote Processing

• EOIR: an additional $10M for the Virtual Court initiative to further digitize efforts to become paperless or near paperless and increasing capabilities to process cases by adjudicatory personnel remotely or by automation
• USA: an additional $3M for remote classified processing that will allow for classified and operational support in times of mandated remote work