DOD sees small increase in IT budget

The Defense Department’s fiscal 2009 information technology budget request of $33 billion represents a 3 percent increase over DOD’s enacted fiscal 2008 IT budget, according to the new report by Government Insights. But the agency’s IT security request component represents a major increase from the 2008 budget, the independent research and advisory firm said today.

More specifically, the security component of the Defense IT budget request totals $4 billion, or 12.2 percent of the total IT budget. This represents a 3.4 percent increase over the fiscal 2008 IT security budget of $3.9 billion. By comparison, the enacted 2008 defense IT budget was $32.1 billion and the enacted 2008 defense IT security budget was $3.9 billion, or 12.1 percent of the total IT budget, Government Insights reported.

"If the 3.4 percent increase in DOD’s fiscal ’09 IT security budget is approved, it will mean that the IT security budget will have increased as a percentage of the total defense IT budget from 7.6 percent to 12.2 percent during the five years from 2005 to 2009,” said Mark Kagan, research manager at Government Insights. “That highlights the critical importance of IT security in the Defense Department.”

Furthermore, the study found the Defense IT budget’s compound annual growth rate in the 2005–2009 period to be 1.2 percent, compared with a 10.9 percent CAGR for the Defense IT security budget over the same five-year period.

The report also provides detailed descriptions of the 52 Air Force, Army, Navy and Defense Agency IT programs that are specifically coded as security programs, and 106 IT programs that contain over 30 percent of the DOD IT security budget, which is embedded spending not specifically identified in the budget.