The New Normal for Federal IT Spending?

by Tomas O’Keefe, Senior Analyst

For the past few years we’ve been saying we’re in the dawn of a new budget environment — where the days of significant year-over-year growth for IT spending are over. At the TechAmerica Vision Conference, which wrapped-up yesterday, speakers referenced conversations they had with top government IT leaders, confirming flat and declining budgets are the “new normal” in government. Most notably, the days of 7% overall IT budget growth are done.

This “new normal” is sinking in and agencies are now grappling with how to modernize aging infrastructure and applications with flat or declining IT dollars. This problem is compounded by the rising cost of maintaining legacy systems which siphon dollars from new development and systems design. Agency officials are beginning to realize they’re going to have to meet the challenge of modernizing an infrastructure that’s costing them an increasing amount of their budget, to deliver mission needs necessary to serve the American people.

The question of how agencies can modernize in this “new normal”, is going to be one that we’ll focus on during immixGroup’s 10^th Annual FY15 Civilian Budget Briefing, taking place exclusively at the Government IT Sales Summit on November 20, 2014. Government agencies are looking towards analytics that tell them where they can save money across the enterprise. They need cloud solutions to help them reduce cost by virtualizing infrastructure and paying for only what they use. And mobility and BYOD solutions will help them enable a mobile workforce that will increase productivity.

None of these are new technologies to the government space, but we’re beginning to see a change in government leaders recognizing the value of these tools and their ability to increase mission performance at a reduced cost. Join us on November 20^th at the McLean Hilton to learn about government IT leaders you should be talking to and the message you need to bring them in order to compete and succeed in FY15 and beyond.