Outlook for IT Spending at the Navy Through 2022

A complex environment and critical mission objectives continue to impact IT growth prospects at the Department of the Navy, sustaining support for core initiatives and high-priority objectives.

Included in Deltek’s latest Federal Information Technology Market, 2019-2024, we forecast that spending by the Department of the Navy on contracted IT goods and services will climb from $13.4 billion in FY 2019 to $15.8 billion in FY 2024 reflecting a 3.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). (See chart below.)

Deltek’s forecast projects increased spending on software and communications and network services followed by IT services, with much more modest spending on hardware on over the forecast period.

IT Investment Drivers

Within a challenging fiscal, organizational and geopolitical environment the Navy and Marine Corps will sustain investing in key IT priority areas like cloud computing, cybersecurity, big data, and mobile technologies.

The Navy has been a strong proponent of pursuing cloud capabilities to meet operational and fiscal challenges and has long favored a commercial cloud preference for non-sensitive data and systems. The Navy plans to release a migration strategy for their cloud-ready application inventory by the end of FY 2019. The Marine Corps has also been working up a new enterprise cloud strategy. Leaders of Navy and Marine Corps note plans to migrate nearly all non-sensitive IT systems to commercial clouds by FY 2021. Commands have been conducting mission threat assessments and business process analyses to determine which data sets and applications can be migrated.

To increase its overall security posture, Navy is working to meet cyber threats to its enterprise IT systems, mission systems, platforms, and communications systems. The cyber priority impacts budgets, technologies, organizations and personnel. The DON’s strategic Cyber Readiness Review, released in March 2019, concluded the Navy must adopt industry best practices to address significant cultural, personnel, structural, process and resource changes necessary to adapt to the new world of digital warfare. The Navy requested $1.6B for FY 2020 for Cyberspace Activities (CA), a boost of more than $138M from FY 2019 which accounts for about 16% of DOD’s total FY 2020 CA budget.

The Navy’s big data efforts are intertwined with its evolving cloud computing, cybersecurity and network modernization efforts. However, a comprehensive data strategy continues to be slowed by organizational changes and a complex technical environment. The Navy has spent more than a year searching for a Chief Data Officer to help guide the department in harnessing, simplifying and integrating its data across the enterprise, with no success. Currently, data management strategy responsibilities fall under the Chief Management Officer position. The Navy’s Strategy for Data and Analytics Optimization has been in place since the end of FY 2017.

Finally, Navy and Marine Corps efforts to build mobile capabilities at the enterprise and tactical levels span from mission tactical environments to base-level operations. Advancing their Mobile Identity Management, the Navy is now using derived credentials to enable mobile phone users to access data and system capabilities without the need for CAC readers. Examples include their MyRecord Mobile and DISA’s Purebred programs.

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