O verall themes from the civilian day were a bit different than the DoD forecast. Civilian agencies are trying to figure out how to take all the money they spend on operating and maintaining (O&M) legacy technology and shift more of it to new or updated technology. That’s where the increasing push for development and operations (Dev/Ops) is coming into play, as well as the continued push for lowest price, technically acceptable (LPTA).

TechAmerica reports that O&M spending has and will continue to hold steady between 2011 and 2015 ranging from 70 percent to 78 percent of the total IT budget. Meanwhile, money for new technology or modernization has been dropping since 2010 from 32 percent to an estimated 22 percent in 2015.

Overall, TechAmerica forecasts the federal IT budget to drop to $73.7 billion in fiscal 2015, but rise slowly to $84 billion by 2020.

Here are some other items that stood out from civilian IT day:

• The rise of software-as-a-service will take off in the coming years. TechAmerica found virtualization of at the application level means bulky, hard-to- develop apps such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can be pushed to the cloud more easily. This relates to the broader message to industry, “Everyone is speaking ‘innovation.’ Bring us innovation that is tangible and shows better, faster, or cheaper.”
• Contractor’s as piñatas. Vendors are feeling the pressure from the assortment of new rules and regulations coming from the administration. Whether it’s a new minimum wage or supply chain security management requirements or DoD’s pass through rules for FAR Part 15, contractors believe all of these new requirements will add costs to the federal acquisition process. Again, this relates to a broader theme of “contractor Darwinism” where initiatives such as strategic sourcing, LPTA and other similar initiatives are hurting the government’s industrial base. TechAmerica reported that since 2009 the use of LPTA has increased by 10 percent to 36 percent of all new, competitively awarded contracting actions worth $25 million or more.
• Current cyber approaches need to change. That was a “no-duh” moment for anyone who follows federal cybersecurity. But what stands out from TechAmerica is how the change has to happen: “Moving from signature-based to behavior-based intrusion detection tools.” TechAmerica predicted current cyber tools such as anti-virus and signature-based tools would be obsolete in two-to-three years.

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