August and September are shaping up to be very good months for federal IT. Federal agencies' end-of-fiscal-year fiscal spending is expected to be higher than the past two years, according to an article in nextgov.com.

Traditionally, federal agencies use the last two months of the fiscal year to spend down on their budgets before the year ends on Sept. 30. Any money left in their accounts is lost if they do not.

In the last two years, federal agencies were constrained because they were under continuing resolutions from Congress, not enacted budgets. Larry Allen, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, told nextgov.com this week that agencies have their full fiscal 2009 budgets this year, which are fatter than fiscal 2008 budgets.

"The end of this fiscal year is a return to four to five years ago," when the spike in spending was higher, he said. "There's a more defined flurry of activity. In [fiscal] 2007, 2008, there was not really as much of a bump at the end of the year."

Shawn McCarthy, research director for IDC Government Insights, told nextgov.com that agencies have between 15 and 20 percent of their IT budgets left to spend.

"There's extremely high interest in replacing older desktops with laptops," McCarthy said. "It's not only an energy saver, but also a business continuity issue" since workers can use their laptops elsewhere in the event of a power outage or damage to an office building.

For more on the end-of-the-year spending spree:
- check out this nextgov.com article