Will digital Service Funding Survive Congressional Penny Pinching?

The White House’s US Digital Service team, which is approaching its first birthday and has staffed up over the past year with top techies from Silicon Valley, is getting tight-fisted treatment from lawmakers in the spending bills being hashed out on Capitol Hill. The Obama Administration’s plan to embed similar digital tech teams at agencies across government has also run into congressional penny pinching, even as lawmakers say they support the teams’ role in turning around troubled government IT projects.

The Senate appropriations committee approved an annual spending measure that would grant USDS just one-third of the new funding President Barack Obama requested to scale up the “stealth startup” team. The Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill OK’d a $5 million increase for the Office of Management and Budget’s IT fund, which is currently operating with a $20 million budget. The Administration had sought an additional $15.2 million for 2016 to support the growth of the White House tech team and other governmentwide IT initiatives. The House appropriations committee, meanwhile, has recommended nixing new digital service funding. The Senate committee didn’t specify why lawmakers decided not to fully fund the Administration’s request, although annual caps on agency spending -- the result of a 2011 bipartisan budget deal, which the White House wants to renegotiate -- limit the amount of new spending.