The federal government is expected to invest $27.7B for unclassified information technology contracts in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020 following increased spending for telework technologies in March, Bloomberg Government reported Thursday.
BGOV noted that the projected amount exceeds the $26.9B in spending recorded during Q4 FY 2019 and that the Department of Veterans Affairs is “likely to make significant investments” during that period after securing $2.2B in additional funding for IT and electronic health records modernization.
Agencies also spent over $1.1B for IT programs related to COVID-19 response, with $467M of that amount attributed to the VA.
Federal agencies are on track to obligate $72B for IT contracts in fiscal 2020, increasing its spending by 3.6 percent from last year’s total, according to BGOV.
The report added that while IT contracts have been “largely insulated from work stoppages," a surge of COVID-19 cases could trigger increased appropriations and spending to support agencies’ modernization efforts amid the global health crisis.
