Obama seeks tiny IT budget increase

President Obama's proposed fiscal 2011 budget was delivered to Congress on Monday, and it includes $79.4 billion for information technology, InformationWeek reports.

The proposal would hardly be a raise for federal IT. It's a 1.2 percent bump from 2010--in line with Obama's pledge to freeze discretionary spending for three years.

The request, a slice of Obama's $3.8 trillion budget proposal, must be approved by Congress, and will take many months of hearings, debate and compromise before anything is settled over how much money is available to run the federal government in 2011. Nevertheless, IT has become embedded in government, and is clearly essential to run the government as well as its biggest programs, not to mention the nation's security.

It includes funds to make private and public sector cyber infrastructure more secure. It tightens border security and provides more money for airport security. There are funds to help make electronic medical records a reality and modernize the nation's air traffic control system.

The biggest and smallest IT requests will be hammered out in the coming months. Critical issues such as airline security will be at the top at the list. However, the best guidance on the budget sweepstakes is this: Don't count on anything yet. Keep plugging away with your current budget and expect there will be changes for 2011. We just don't know exactly what they are yet.

For more on the 2011 budget request:
- see this InformationWeek article

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