OMB has submitted a final report to Congress for fiscal 2015 stating that currently enacted or continuing appropriations are within discretionary spending limits, meaning a disruptive round of sequestration-driven cuts isn’t happening this year as it did in 2013.
Cuts of roughly $85 billion that year pushed agencies to delay IT purchases, often hardware purchases, or system upgrades, and spurred some to seek out cloud solutions when they might not otherwise have opted to do so. But in the absence of cuts these approaches are only expected to continue becoming the norm as agencies increasingly adopt a cloud-first approach, or consider reusing existing systems before contemplating new investments.
Under the newly enacted Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, agencies also will be required to review all IT investments each year to find ways to cut down on duplication and waste – forcing agencies to do proactively what sequestration mandated. HR and financial management systems in particular could be candidates for consolidation since there are so many similar deployments. The law also seeks to consolidate like websites, and authorizes working capital funds to facilitate cloud solutions.
