A just-past-deadline deal to put off a decision about drastic federal spending cuts until February will provide little solace for government technology chiefs and may be more damaging than if the draconian cuts had gone into effect, observers said Wednesday.
With no final decision on how or even whether to avert the slate of automatic cuts known as sequestration, agency leaders must spend two more months planning and budgeting for the most austere outcome or risk violating budgeting laws by overspending, said Alan Balutis, a former chief information officer at the Commerce Department and now a director at Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group.
The major change resulting from the last minute deal is that if and when a sequestration-averting plan comes through, agencies will have only seven months to rejigger their spending to conform with final budget allowances before the government fiscal year ends in September 2013, Balutis said, rather than nine months if a deal had been reached by January 1, the initial deadline.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2013/01/no-good-news-government-it-sequestration-delay/60433/?oref=nextgov_today_nl.
