Obama on the cloud
With US Congress in the mood to cut spending, the federal budget proposed by president Barack Obama relies heavily on cloud computing and data centre consolidation to keep IT costs under control, notes Computer World.
The Obama administration's 2012 federal budget proposal sets aside $79.5 billion for IT spending for fiscal 2012, which begins 1 October.
This proposal would increase IT spending by 1.9% compared to fiscal 2010. The current fiscal year's IT spending remains a work in progress as the federal government operates under Continuing Resolutions. The latest resolution gives it enough money to operate through 4 March.
Information Week reports that Obama's fiscal 2012 IT budget focuses on cutting what the government can't afford while still investing in game-changing technologies, according to federal CIO Vivek Kundra in a call with reporters.
On one hand, Information Week adds, the budget begins a multi-year shift toward eliminating more than 800 federal data centres and eventually moving as much as $20 billion in IT spending to the cloud via data centre consolidation and a cloud-first budgeting policy.
Citing Kundra, Federal Computer reveals that eight federal agencies and departments in the US would see more than 10% cut from their IT budgets in fiscal 2012 as part of a broader management reform programme reflected in the administration's budget request.
Kundra adds that in all, 17 agencies and departments would lose IT funding under the proposal. The largest proposed IT funding reduction, by percentage, would affect the Office of Personnel Management, down 33%, primarily through reductions to a financial system expenditure that would save $23 million, Kundra says.
Nasa would lose $512 million, or 24%, on infrastructure; the education department would be cut by $174 million, or 21%; and the commerce department would be down $466 million, or 16%.
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