While Federal agencies are awaiting President Biden’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget set for release sometime next month, a senior U.S. Navy official said this week that the service branch’s budget for digital transformation efforts has not been immune from spending pressures that agencies are facing going forward.
Russell Rumbaugh, Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Financial Management & Comptroller) talked about those pressures across the service branch during remarks at the Digital Transformation Summit 2024 hosted by ACT-IAC on Feb. 22.
“We’re a few weeks away from rolling out the President’s budget, so I can’t provide you too many details on [fiscal year] 2025,” he said. “But you know, we’ve already done it, and we’re submitting a budget under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, and that has meant hard choices.”
Congress approved the Fiscal Responsibility Act in June 2023 as part of efforts to loosen national debt ceiling limits. The law caps Federal non-defense discretionary spending in fiscal year 2024 close to FY2023 levels, while limiting non-defense spending increases to one percent in FY2025.
“We’re capped and those choices did not spare digital transformation efforts,” said Rumbaugh.
One of the key issues that outweighs the potential adoption of new technology is the need to stay at the ready with technology that is already in use, he said.
“We are going to protect readiness at the expense of investment,” Rumbaugh said.
“So while I really just hope Congress will listen to me and get on with it and get us going, I am just telling you there’s a decent chance there’s just less money than we expected, and you’re going to have to bear the burden of it,” Rumbaugh told the crowd full of industry and Federal tech professionals.
While that news might be a tough pill to swallow, Rumbaugh said the service branch has done its best to convince members of Congress of the need for more digital transformation efforts across the Navy.
“We’re doing our best to explain it to Congress, but any help you can provide in doing that is appreciated, and that is just a hard message that we have to get out of there,” he said.
