As we near the end of the Federal Buying Season, there will be a lot of buzz around final dollars spent over the next few weeks. Yet the EDGE360 team wants to focus on what comes next. On October 1, federal agencies of all sizes will begin looking at what they need for the coming fiscal year. To help you prepare for those conversations, this roundup includes stories about who you can turn to for support in setting up your public sector business and what is happening today that will affect buying decisions heading into the future of Federal IT.
Cisco promotes Michaelides
Cisco’s Nick Michaelides has been promoted from federal sales lead to senior vice president of the company’s U.S. public sector organization. The 14-year Cisco veteran most recently oversaw Cisco’s second-largest market in the Americas region. As he takes the helm of Cisco’s U.S. public sector organization, the company continues to evolve in areas like cloud computing, cyber, analytics and others that span IT infrastructures.
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Revisiting the Federal Budget Outlook
The Congressional Budget Office projects a debt-to-GDP ratio of 92 percent by fiscal 2029 under current law, up from 78 percent today. A new report from the Brookings Institute takes a look at this projection from three viewpoints. First, they look at it under a current policy scenario similar to the CBO’s alternative fiscal scenario — in which policymakers routinely extend temporary provisions, as they have in the past. In that scenario, the report projects a debt-to-GDP ratio near 106 percent in 2029. In the second scenario, they highlight that the currently strong economy is masking an underlying fiscal problem. In the third, they say that after the coming decade, fiscal pressures will mount, with the debt-to-GDP ratio rising to 194 percent under current policy by 2049.
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The Federal Budget Deficit Is Getting Bigger as Spending Grows
Congressional budget forecasters are predicting more red ink — nearly $1 trillion this year — as a result of the bipartisan spending agreement lawmakers struck this summer. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office now says the federal deficit will hit $960 billion in fiscal 2019 and average $1.2 trillion in each of the next 10 years. The CBO raised its forecast for this year’s deficit by $63 billion after lawmakers agreed to boost spending on both defense and domestic programs. “The nation’s fiscal outlook is challenging,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in a statement. “To put it on a sustainable course, lawmakers will have to make significant changes to tax and spending policies” by boosting revenues, cutting spending or adopting some combination of the two, he said.
What the Federal Cloud Market Could Look Like In 5 Years
A new report on the federal cloud market expects the government to increase its expenditure on cloud computing by nearly $4 billion in the next five years. According to a Deltek forecast of the federal cloud market, the government will likely spend $9.1 billion in fiscal year 2024 on cloud computing, an increase from $5.3 billion in FY2019. The report breaks down spending by agency and says that the impetus in spending growth is that cloud computing is a critical part of agency modernization and that federal agencies are under increased pressure both from the executive and legislative branch to move away from their own data centers and migrate to the cloud. Moving to cloud computing presents agencies with cheaper and more efficient options than running their own data centers. Cloud computing is also pushing agencies to adopt emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.
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The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plans to direct agencies to follow a specific schedule when buying technology that tracks agency IT spend, according to an updated Request for Information posted by the General Services Administration. In addition, a support system is being established to streamline the process. Under the plan, when agencies buy technology business management (TBM) tools and services, which help agencies track IT spending down to lower levels, agencies are directed to use GSA IT Schedule 70. This schedule shortens the procurement cycle and ensures vendor compliance with laws and regulations.
TBM will allow “organizations to disaggregate IT spending into smaller, consistent categories to provide CIOs and other C-suite executives with a more accurate and detailed understanding of their organization’s IT costs.” The visibility TBM will provide is a significant part of goal 10 of the Presidential Management Agenda’s cross-agency priority goals, which look to bring more transparency to federal IT spending.
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