Technology Squeeze

The squeeze is on technology everywhere you look in government. Money is tight due to the deficit, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a global war against terrorists, so technology purchasing has slowed, except at the Pentagon. President Bush's fiscal 2005 budget raised annual spending to $61 billion, a meager increase from the previous year and nothing close to the pace of 2001 to 2003, when spending jumped by 31 percent.

As a result, managers are looking for contracts and projects that bring more bang for the buck. At the Defense Department, for example, they're using expanded data networks to spread more information faster, so troops and officers can cover more ground and fight more efficiently. And at the Homeland Security Department, they're tying together disparate databases and building new ones to speed the flow of people across U.S. borders.

Bigger, broader governmentwide contracts with many companies aggregate the demand of many agencies to bring down prices and allow fast purchasing. The General Services Administration, master of such deals, is working on a new one, the $150 billion Alliant contract for a range of information technology services. The Commerce Depart-ment has launched the second version of its vast IT services contract, Commerce Information Tech-nology Solutions NexGen, making more than 50 vendors available to government buyers.

Huge technology systems are remaking whole departments by speeding services to citizens and moving forms online. Witness the Internal Revenue Service's ongoing effort to upgrade its entire IT infrastructure and the FBI's push to make all its case files searchable online. And through half a dozen new GSA contracts, the government now is asking technology companies to invest their own money upfront in new IT systems in return for a cut of the savings those systems generate.

The poster inside rounds up key contracts and IT projects that agencies hope will ease the squeeze in 2005. You'll also find a time line of events and milestones to watch for in the next year.