Obama budget targets IT spending

Spending flat as government looks to cloud and datacentre consolidation

Obama; looking to reduce federal IT spending

The British government is not alone in looking to IT to reduce the budget deficit – Barack Obama's 2011 proposed budget increases federal IT spend by just 1.2 per cent to $79.4bn (£49bn) – just above the rate of inflation.

To cut costs, the White House will seek a reduction in the number of datacentres, now at 1,100, though it doesn't mention a target number.

The administration also wants to centralise the delivery of some IT services across government departments through the use of cloud technologies and other platforms, and expand its government applications store – though details are vague.

The budget states: "After evaluation in 2010, agencies will deploy cloud computing solutions across the government."

The Department of the Interior will be required to shave $20m (£12.5m) or two per cent of current information technology spending by reducing duplicate systems.

And the White House also wants to widely deploy social networking tools to help make government smarter through continuous collaboration.

The budget notes plan to re-launch the USASpending.gov platform with new data, as well as expand the use of Data.gov, and develop a Citizens' Services Dashboard to provide transparency to customer service.

The budget includes plans to unveil a cybersecurity dashboard in the spring, improve its collection of cybersecurity spending and implement new metrics for use in 2010 Federal Information Security Management Act reporting.