An analysis by U.S. government research company Input sees continued opportunity for IT contractors over the next five years, starting with fiscal year 2011. The government intends to spend upward of $110 billion on IT by 2015, from $86 billion in 2011. That’s “a compound annual growth rate of 5.4 percent” in five years, Input said.
“There’s no doubt that the administration will continue to push for cost-cutting measures,” Input Principal Analyst John Slye said in a statement. “However, the criticality of IT to government operations and priorities, as well as the gap in federal IT expertise, suggests that IT spending will continue with modest growth.”
Input predicts Uncle Sam will have a difficult time ridding itself of the need for technology contract work as it ups its reliance on technology to help drive down cost and waste from existing government systems. While the government tries to insource technology talent, Input said it believes pressing needs will keep outsourced contract work thriving.
Besides the large subsidies being pushed in health care technology, a number of federal agencies and departments are looking at cost-saving opportunities in cloud computing that have the potential to mean contract opportunities in Web services, applications, security, system administration, storage and a host of system integration deals.
The government’s General Services Administration is taking a serious look at infrastructure as a service and has requests for qualification from cloud computing companies as of a June 15 deadline, according to Information Week. The Department of Information Services Agency, which is part of the Department of Defense, is already providing cloud services to government agencies, including the Forge.mil site for software and apps development.
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is implementing Google’s hosted apps and building private clouds with the Argonne National Lab, also according to Information Week.