Although federal spending on IT has increased in recent years, analysts anticipate this spending will decrease through 2018, according to a Forrester Research analysis reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Technology spending — including computers, communications equipment and software — in all federal agencies is expected to decrease by 0.1 percent this year, followed by a 0.6 percent decrease in 2018. This decline anticipates federal technology spending will fall to roughly $85 billion in 2018, according to the report.
IT spending had been growing about 2 percent each year between 2013 and 2016, according to The Wall Street Journal. Although some IT spending is expected to continue to increase — for example, federal spending on cloud computing is projected to increase by 2.6 percent — overall declines in hardware spending and telecommunications services will drive spending downwards.