TechAmerica Spending Predictions 2011 and on

TechAmerica has released federal IT spending predictions. Their five-year forcast of Federal IT growth is 2.8% a year from $79.6B in FY 11 to $91.3 in FY 16. Additionally, they predict that DoD spending will drop 1.1% annually over the next ten years, resulting in a drop from $704B in FY 11 to $663B in FY 21.

“Both federal IT and defense spending are likely to run up against the realities of an uncertain economy, the federal debt and other pressures in coming years,” said TechAmerica Foundation Chairman Phil Bond. TechAmerica breaks down the IT spending growth in DoD dollars and civilian, With DoD moving from $36.9B to $40.3B and civilian spending rising from $42.8B to $50.9B over the next five years. Of all the civilian agencies, HHS and the Department of Treasury are expected to have the most IT growth.

What Does all this mean?

This is indicative of the fact that all agencies (civilian and DoD) are under pressure to extract the greatest value from every IT dollar. In the 90′s this was achieved through word processing and printers (in lieu of typewriting), in the 2000′s it was an interconnected, instant sharing world. Today, IT and business managers must use technology to create business flow savings, and expedite work flows.

Expect continued growth and desire for streamlining capabilities and resource saving/consolidating solutions.
Work towards TIME and MONEY saving solutions
Forklift upgrades need not apply
Look for training/capability trade-offs (training costs time and money – thus too many managers are loathe to require it)

The key technologies of the next 5 years are going to work much like technologies that are currently used, just faster and more efficient (leveraging new concepts like Cloud, of course). The bottom line for new adoption may be: if it is not as easy to use as Facebook, it won’t work.