While it’s better to have short-term Federal government funding than to have none at all, a broad swath of Federal IT experts told MeriTalk that shorter-term congressional funding crimps agencies’ efforts to modernize their IT infrastructure and applications.
By broad bipartisan votes last week, Congress approved legislation that extended funding for the Federal government at fiscal year (FY) 2024 spending levels until Dec. 20. Absent that continuing resolution (CR), major portions of the government would have shut down at midnight on Sept. 30, which marked the end of FY2024.
IT leaders across the Federal government and industry agreed this week that CRs are harmful to agency operations, particularly when it comes to modernizing technology or starting new projects.
The latest CR deal follows a very rocky funding year for the government in FY2024, when four separate CR agreements kept the government afloat until regular appropriations were finally approved six months before the fiscal year ended.
Government leaders are wary of a repeat performance in FY2025, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warning that “short-term, temporary funding measures create uncertainty throughout the U.S. military and put us at a strategic disadvantage.”
“A lack of long-term funding delays missions, undermines readiness, and inflicts unnecessary disruptions on our military families and recruitment efforts,” Austin said. “Furthermore, functioning under a CR impedes military readiness and makes it impossible in most cases to begin or accelerate new programs. Our strategic competitors’ militaries do not have to work under CRs.”
“To ensure the U.S. military remains prepared to meet the national-security challenges of today’s complex world, and to ensure sustained American competitiveness and leadership, I urge Congress to reach a bipartisan agreement on FY 2025 appropriations this fall,” the Pentagon leader said. “As I have said before, that is not only the right thing to do, but also the best thing that Congress can do to keep our country strong and secure.”
Congressman Gerry Connolly, D-Va., ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, IT, and Government Innovation, told MeriTalk that “successful deployment of IT in the Federal government depends on both the availability and the reliability of resources.”
“Agencies cannot adequately utilize IT without the funding necessary to obtain and maintain it, and they can’t plan ahead without some measure of assurance that that funding will be available to them in the future,” Rep. Connolly said. “It’s why we have fought so hard for a fully funded Technology Modernization Fund, and it’s why this endless cycle of CRs and stopgap measures is so harmful to the Federal government’s IT efforts.”
Ross Nodurft, executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation (ADI), said that CRs make it “even harder” for emerging commercial technology solutions to enter the government market.
“CRs add uncertainty and risk around any budgeting decision an agency makes – whether to critical enterprise cloud services or investments in modern technology that can help deliver services to citizens or give our warfighters an edge on the front lines,” Nodurft told MeriTalk. “The sad truth is that departments and agencies in the civilian and defense communities are learning how to operate under a continuing resolution given that they’ve had to do it so many times over the last ten years.”
“ADI continues to advocate for more funding pathways that provide multi-year funding or use of working capital funds to help de-risk the government acquisition process,” he added. “This would give agency enterprise technology providers and mission owners the ability to acquire the latest technology and not continue sinking money into costly legacy solutions.”
Tom Suder, the founder and president of the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC), emphasized that “budget uncertainty, along with acquisition and cultural challenges within the DoD, needlessly handicaps our military.”
“Ironically, the lack of a consistent budget often results in rushed, end-of-year decisions, leading to waste and poor spending choices,” he added.
“Agencies’ IT and cyber budgets typically are not meeting all their existing critical cyber and modernization needs, so starting a new fiscal year with temporary funding unfortunately continues this trend that directly impacts delivering modernized capabilities,” said Dave Powner, the executive director of MITRE’s Center for Data-Driven Policy.
Partnership for Public Service VP of Government Affairs, Jenny Mattingley, said that stop-gap measures hinder innovations in technology, operations, and staffing that the government needs to deliver services more effectively, “forcing agencies to live with a fiscal uncertainty that prevents them from making long-term, strategic decisions.”
“No private sector organization could function effectively under such constraints, and our government should not be expected to either,” she said.
Lawmakers now have about 12 weeks to consider and approve the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund the Federal government. The election season, however, means that Congress won’t return to Washington until Nov. 12, and the next shut-down deadline looms on Dec. 20.
