Technology programs at the Justice Department along with the department's topline budget will take a hit in the coming fiscal year should a House Appropriation subcommittee gets its way, although the FBI would be able to look forward to increases in its technical personnel budget.

The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee voted in a July 7 markup in favor of a fiscal 2012 Justice budget of $72.34 billion, $61.89 million below the president's request and $45.91 million less than what Congress gave DOJ in the current fiscal year. The full committee is set to consider the funding bill on July 13.

According to the report accompanying the subcommittee mark, among the affected budget lines would be the Justice Information Sharing Technology, for which the subcommittee would appropriate $44.31 million, $10 million below the request and $15.86 million less than the current year.

The budget line is a centralized account under the control of the DOJ chief information officer. Among the programs that it funds is the Law Enforcement Sharing Program, a Justice-wide effort to share information about terrorism, criminal activity, and threats to public safety. Also under the info sharing budget line is the Unified Financial Management System, the department's cybersecurity program, and the Joint Automated Booking System. JABS, like its name implies, automates the booking process for DOJ law enforcement components, and also interfaces with the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Another account reduced, relative to the president's budget request, would be Law Enforcement Wireless Communications, which would receive $99.8 million, $2.95 million below request and the same as the current fiscal year. The account in the past funded the Integrated Wireless Network, a planned nationwide interoperable wireless network for federal law enforcement--a project that appears suspended except for rollout in the national capital region. Justice officials had wanted to ask Congress for $205 million in fiscal 2012 appropriations in order to continue with IWN, an unconfirmed background source earlier told FierceGovernmentIT, but said that the Office of Management and Budget denied the request.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations, however, would get a plus up of $18.63 million to its salaries and expenses account (for a total that includes additional plus ups of $7.99 billion) to fund 42 new positions for investigative improvement and protection of infrastructure related to malicious cyber intrusions.

The increase in funding would enable the FBI "to proactively combat terrorist use of the Internet, to establish 24x7 operations at the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, and to improve the analysis of digital evidence," the report states.

The subcommittee would also have the FBI fund 10 positions with $8.02 million of salaries and expenses money to support an FBI-wide, aggregated investigative data management system.  Another plus-up, of $10.46 million for 13 positions, would go toward establishing a domestic communications assistance center, which would serve as a technical expertise center for electronic surveillance. The FBI has in recent years decried what it says is a phenomenon of new technology making wiretaps more difficult to accomplish.

For more:
- download the subcommittee mark and accompanying report (.pdfs)
- go to the fiscal 2012 DoJ budget request

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