Federal IT spending to top $111 billion by 2015
In a market fettered with uncertainty, INPUT expects the federal demand for IT will continue to present significant opportunities for suppliers. INPUT\'s Deniec...
By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com
Federal IT spending is on the upswing. A new report from INPUT finds that demand will increase to $111.6 billion by 2015.
“We’re looking across five years, so it’s not a year over year kind of growth,” said Deniece Peterson, Manager of Federal Industry Analysis at INPUT. She told Federal News Radio, “it’s looking at the potential growth by 2015.”
Peterson said the predicted compound annual growth rate of 5.4% may be surprising given the budget battles, but “when we look at all of federal IT, which goes beyond some of the numbers that people typically see from the Office of Management and Budget, we do see the potential growth even within this kind of strict fiscal environment.”
Budget tightening has put everything on the table, said Peterson, “but IT has a little bit more insulation just because of the nature of what the government needs.”
“There’s kind of a given that technology actually can help save money,” said Peterson. Federal dollars are being moved to key technology areas that can save money in the long run. As examples, Peterson pointed to data center consolidation “which would include cloud computing and virtualization,” cybersecurity, and “other key technologies that can help streamline processes (and) workflow automation – things to make the federal government more efficient.”
In order to function more efficiently in the current “do more with less” environment, said Peterson, there’s also been an increased reliance on “different types of software to help improve how federal employees do their jobs. The workforce has been pretty flat over the past decade or so, and in order to meet the growth in need to deliver citizen services and meet mission needs, technology has really stepped into that space.”
The bottom line, said Peterson, is there seems to be an understanding by IT managers that “they have to spend money in order to save that money in the long run.”
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