There are plenty of reasons the information technology community should be cheering. If President Barack Obama's 2010 budget is approved by Congress, it will mean a massive infusion of funding into government IT programs, the biggest in four years. And that's aside from the billions from the stimulus package that will be heading to government IT.

But IT experts say it will be hard to see if anything changes immediately. It will take longer to see if Obama's goals of a citizen-centric transparent government are met.

Karen Evans, who headed electronic government and IT initiatives at the Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush years, said Obama's budget will advance initiatives that were started during her tenure when Bush was president.

"What it's doing is taking a lot of what was previously done and leveraging it and moving it forward," Evans told Federal Times.

Ray Bjorklund, chief knowledge officer and vice president of FedSources Inc., a research firm that analyzes federal contracting data, urged caution about wanting too much too soon. It's too soon to see how Obama's vision of using IT to improve government is really going to work, he said.

"I don't see a lot of new, new stuff that really reflects the administration's thumbprint," he said.

For more on the impact of Obama's IT budget:
- check out this Federal Times article