IT in the FY 2022 President’s Budget Request

To date, DOD’s FY 2022 IT budget is not publicly available. DOD’s projected FY 2022 unclassified IT budget presented in its FY 2021 budget request, totals $37.3B.   

The civilian IT budget total presented in the “Information Technology and Cybersecurity Funding” chapter of the Analytical Perspectives budget document of $58.4B does not align with the total of $57.4B reported in the IT Portfolio Summary from the ITDashboard.

According to the budget request text, the civilian IT budget funds 4,531 investments at 25 civilian agencies, 546 of which are considered major IT investments.

The IT budget focuses on securing data and systems, delivering citizen services, and furthering the vision of digital government. The IT budget promotes:

• Reducing cybersecurity risk.
• Laws to enable technology planning, oversight, funding, and accountability. 
• Strategic use of IT to enable missions. 
• Modernizing legacy systems.
• Migrating to commercial cloud solutions and shared services.
• Recruiting, retaining, and reskilling the federal technology workforce. 

Agencies are modernizing IT systems to improve mission and service delivery while making systems and processes more effective, efficient, and secure. Agencies are continuing to deploy standards-based platforms and systems, and leverage commercial capabilities that replace highly customized government technology. The budget cites cloud adoption, shared services and the move to IPv6 as prominent IT modernization efforts.

The budget continues to promote and fund the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) to help propel IT modernization which will strengthen cybersecurity and retire legacy systems. Since its inception in March 2019, TMF has awarded ten initiatives, totaling $79.4M. The budget provides $500M for the TMF, building on the $1B provided in the American Rescue Plan (ARP).

According to the administration, a strong team of cybersecurity and IT professionals will allow agencies to run more efficiently and effectively, and deliver more user-centric services. The administration plans to accomplish this goal through developing a highly trained workforce, making the government an attractive employer, and employing cross-functional professionals who can work in areas like financial management, acquisition, and privacy protections.

The budget supports the Federal Data Strategy and the use of data to deliver on mission, serve citizens, and make decisions. In June 2019, the administration released the first comprehensive Federal Data Strategy, consisting of a framework of guiding principles and best practices for agencies. The strategy also promotes data accountability and transparency over the next ten years.

Strengthening the cybersecurity posture of federal agencies is among the highest IT budget priorities and an important component of the administration’s IT modernization efforts. The budget request includes nearly $9.9B for civilian agency cybersecurity-related activities, a $1.2B (+13.9%) increase from the FY 2021 enacted level. Unlike previous budgets, OMB did not report a DOD cybersecurity budget for FY 2022.

Federal IT contractors can expect to find procurement opportunities stemming from agency IT modernization and cybersecurity efforts, including cloud migration, application rationalization, data center optimization, managed services, workforce training, systems design and integration, program management, and consulting services.