White House Tech Consulting Team Fights for Funding

For weeks the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not answered questions about 2016’s funding for the US Digital Services (USDS). The silence may be connected to a controversy involving the USDS and a group of Silicon Valley technologists who are trying to overcome skepticism and partisan pushback from Congress. On July 23, a Senate appropriations committee approved a spending bill that cuts roughly three-fourths of President Barack Obama’s $20.2 million funding request for IT initiatives. Much of this funding was tied to the USDS operating budget. The setback was preceded by yet another in June, when appropriators in the House of Representatives whittled away the president’s request for $105 million to establish USDS branches within 25 major agencies, with each asking for $1 million to $10 million apiece.

In a statement on June 1, the White House and OMB responded to the House by calling the denial in funding a “failure” and “a missed opportunity to improve key agency services.” The larger issue is whether the potential lapse in funding will derail a campaign by USDS to reform federal IT projects. Former US Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, who stepped down from his post at the end of 2014, had set an aggressive campaign to recruit more than 500 tech experts for the USDS by 2017. If funding is cut, those hiring plans will likely be on hold and diminish any kind of a comprehensive impact on US IT spending, estimated at about $80 billion each year.