Survey: Public-sector IT pros out of the loop on recovery funding
Connecting state and local government leaders
A Dell.com survey of 662 IT professionals in government, education and health care found that most are in the dark about American Recovery and Investment Act funding, and few expect recovery funds to have an impact on their budgets.
Public-sector information technology professionals are largely in the dark about the availability and potential impact of recovery funding, according to a Dell.com survey of 662 IT professionals from federal, state and local governments, and K-12, higher education and health care organizations. Ninety-five respondents were federal government employees and 185 were state and local employees.
Seventy-nine percent of respondents indicated they don’t have enough visibility or are only somewhat aware of the impact and flow of recovery funds from the American Recovery and Investment Act (ARRA) in relation to their organizations. Only 8 percent of respondents anticipate recovery funds to have a significant impact on their budgets. Seventy-eight percent said recovery funds-related information is non-existent, too generic or not understandable and that tailored tools are needed to better navigate the recovery package.
Disparate networks, a lack of standards and resources, and IT budgets are all impediments for surveyed government IT professionals. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed cited the complexity of disparate networks and lack of standards as the largest impediment to modernizing state and federal infrastructure. Thirty-two percent cited lack of resources to deploy and manage IT, and the same number cited tight IT budgets as the main issue.
Data center management and cybersecurity were two top concerns for government IT professionals. Forty-nine percent of government IT respondents found data center consolidation and management to have a high impact on implementing their agency’s mission and 69 percent believed cybersecurity to have a high impact. Records retention and teleworking were two other concerns, with 57 percent and 24 percent of respondents, respectively, seeing those issues as having a significant impact on their agency missions.