Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said that projects receiving funds from the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) would be receiving them soon.
That’s the word from Young, who was asked about the fund distribution during a Senate Committee Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing on the nominations of Young to become OMB director and Nani Coloretti to be deputy director of OMB.
“We certainly expect the announced awards to receive obligated funding in short order,” said Young when asked by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. “So, those decisions have been made. It is literally just the processing and we will keep you up to date but that should not be a long amount of time.”
During the last Congress, $1 billion was allocated for TMF as part of the American Rescue Plan. The TMF board awarded $311 million to seven projects in September 2021. Young said that OMB is finding it must do a lot of technical assistance with the seven projects to get them to a place to receive funding.
“I think we have a dual mandate to go fast enough to deal with these legacy systems that are at risk from cyber threats that attack us every day, but also to get this right,” said Young of TMF. “We have to show that the TMF is a model that works. We have tried to be flexible in the repayment for agencies. Many of them have stretched budgets. But it is important to show … to Congress that [TMF] is deserving of additional resources.”
“You have seen TMF in the budget request last year, my guess is that you will see it again,” she added.
