Sequestration driving major IT cuts
Almost half of federal IT executives face budget cuts greater than 10 percent as a result of sequestration.
MeriTalk interviewed 150 federal IT executives and found that 41 percent are managing these significant budget cuts. The top four IT projects that have been put on the back burner are the following:
- Training/workforce development (51 percent)
- Hardware upgrades (48 percent)
- Software upgrades (41 percent)
- New application development (40 percent)
“These are significant problems,” MeriTalk founder Steve O’Keeffe said, particularly because the top three are such basic functions.
Military Health System (MHS) CIO David Bowen has been quoted as saying that “legacy systems are eating us alive.” Older technologies are chewing up 95 percent of the technology budget, he said. During the mid-June Government Health IT Conference and Exhibition in Washington D.C., Bowen said that sequestration could bite another $5 billion from the MHS in 2014.
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.