“A House bill that’s part of another proposed Covid-19 relief package would include an additional $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund, a government-wide investment fund that supports information technology upgrades. But it’s not likely that that the TMF would receive that large of a boost — and it’s even less clear that it could spend all the money before the funding expired.”
“Eight months into fiscal 2020, the fund has only awarded a little more than half of the existing TMF money — $81 million of the $150 million already appropriated — to modernization projects. The existing fiscal 2020 appropriations will “remain available until expended,” according to the law, but at the current pace, new money from the latest proposal could not be completely expended on IT modernization before it expired at the end of fiscal 2022, as the bill proposes. The TMF’s low spending rate could be due to several factors, such as conservative project choices or lack of qualifying proposals.”
“The $1 billion included in H.R. 6800, called the HEROES Act, would be for “technology-related modernization activities to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally.” That type of IT modernization could include public health-related IT upgrades, electronic medical records, systems to support relief efforts, systems to support welfare assistance and social services programs, systems and hardware that…” Read the full article here.
Source: Tech Fund May Struggle to Spend Potential $1B Boost: This Is IT – By Laura Criste, June 4, 2020. Bloomberg Government.
