Spending bill highlights appropriators’ IT priorities

The $463.5 billion fiscal 2007 spending resolution to fund domestic agencies until October contains language that may hint at the information technology priorities of the new congressional leadership.

The measure, which passed the House Wednesday and is expected to move to the Senate next week (H.J. RES. 20), has specific line items for technology projects that would keep agencies from siphoning away that money to other areas.

The Agriculture Department received $107.9 million for its common computing environment program, which is $1 million less than the fiscal 2007 budget request. The original House version of the bill would have funded the 11-year program to replace the agency's national computing infrastructure at $38.4 million. The Senate had not provided any money for the program and had recommended funding it through other agency accounts.

Appropriators gave the Library of Congress $47 million for its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. The Energy Department would receive $43 million for cybersecurity-related activities.

The bill would give the Justice Department $123.5 million for its information sharing technology account, which covers several IT projects with departmentwide impact, and $89.2 million for its integrated wireless network, a national effort to create an integrated voice, data and multimedia network for law enforcement officers and first responders.

In addition, the bill would appropriate $6.9 million for the Office of Personnel Management's enterprise human resources integration, a $740 million 10-year project to allow federal workers to access their personnel records from a centralized online database.

The Office of Management and Budget's human resources line of business initiative, which is an attempt led by OPM to consolidate duplicative agency HR systems and processes, would receive $1.4 million.

E-government funding restrictions established by law in the fiscal 2006 appropriations bills still apply under continuing resolutions, according to the House Appropriations Committee. But most interagency transfers of funds for e-government projects already have been processed or denied.

Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president of McLean, Va., Federal Sources Inc., said the spending resolution is similar to an omnibus appropriations bill because it specifies certain line items often in accordance with the Bush administration's request and sometimes lower.

The appropriations for the OPM human resources projects would act as nest eggs to fund the cross-government initiatives, Bjorklund said.

"The fact that a program was called out tells us that this is a program that the House wants to see go forward," Bjorklund said. "They want to make sure that those continuing investments are going forward as opposed to the traditional continuing resolution, which says to keep things the way they were the previous year."