Gov't Re-prioritizes Tech Spending

RESTON, Va. -- Congress recently passed a bill which approves the Department of Defense (DoD) to spend as much as $679 billion in fiscal year 2008, which includes $189 billion in supplementals for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report recently released by INPUT, the authority on government business. This represents an increase of 8.4% over spending in fiscal year 2007.

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) has spurred spending on advanced technologies, such as net-centric and embedded technologies, but has siphoned away funds for traditional or pure-play IT projects resulting in a slight slowing of the annual growth rate of such technologies over the next few years,” said Lauren Jones, principal analyst with INPUT. “While spending on traditional IT in DoD will still increase, INPUT forecasts that it will do so at a rate of about 5.5% over each of the next few years.”

The Authorization Bill, passed last week, included The Acquisition Improvement and Accountability Act of 2007, major acquisition reform that vendors should pay attention to, according to the INPUT report.

“The Bill and accompanying conference report include far-reaching acquisition reforms that could negatively impact technology vendors and integrators, especially a clause in the conference report prohibiting the use of lead system integrators beginning in October of 2010,” said Jones. “Vendors should monitor how the acquisition reform is implemented and be ready to accommodate the changes it will require in their business processes and dealings with the department.”

Input