President Obama has sent a $3.8 trillion budget plan to Congress that includes a proposed $79.4 billion in information technology spending across all agencies to support the priorities outlined in his State of the Union address, while also proposing a three-year budget freeze on a substantial number of discretionary spending programs.

As for the overall fiscal 2011 budget, education, defense and jobs initiatives would benefit from the plan. However, if past years are any indication, which seems to be the case, the actual final spending plan will trickle out one department at a time over several months. Supplemental spending bills are likely inevitable as the economic and political winds blow and the ship of state changes course — especially true in this midterm election year.

It's important to keep in mind that this is a budget proposal. Last year, the president's proposed IT budget was $75.8 billion, but the final enacted fiscal 2010 IT budget was $80.7 billion. So the 2011 IT budget request is an increase from what the administration proposed for this year, but ultimately would represent a roughly 1.7 percent decrease from the final current budget. Is that bad news for federal IT? Not necessarily.

While in previous years the IT budget requests have been coordinated through a de facto chief information officer in the Office of Management and Budget, this is the first year that the overall IT request has been coordinated through an appointed federal CIO with broad responsibility for developing and executing an accompanying federal enterprise IT strategy. In the 2011 federal IT request, federal CIO Vivek Kundra has outlined efforts to close what he calls the government's "technology gap." There are four broad initiatives:

• Management of federal IT investments.

• Enabling an open, transparent and participatory government.

• Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government business.

• Advancing the information security of the federal government.

To accomplish these, Kundra promises to increase efforts to oversee the federal IT portfolio, reduce wasteful spending and scale best practices.

The IT proposal envisions the increased use of collaborative technology in 2011, built on 2009 initiatives, and furthered in 2010 by mandates such as the open government directive. Examples include emphasis on Data.gov for access to federal data sources, tools to improve collaboration across agencies, and agency adoption of social media technologies. Investments will also be made in technologies that can simplify loans, grants and payments, and allow constituents to receive updates on their cases.

Working in tandem with this budget proposal are efforts to decrease infrastructure costs, such as the Homeland Security Department's move to consolidate 23 data centers into two.

There are ambitious goals in the president's proposed budget and some challenges within the proposed budget freeze on substantial amounts of discretionary spending. After reviewing and completing a quick analysis of agency budgets, we believe that the proposed IT budget and the goals laid out by the CIO are congruous to meeting that challenge and supporting the president's priorities. The road ahead As shown in agency plans, agencies may experience spending increases or decreases in the coming fiscal year. Yet the budget proposed by the administration makes it clear that federal spending on IT solutions will remain strong.

The federal government is "spending money to save money" for the long term, with many plans targeted at consolidation and other solutions that will allow agencies to reduce long-term software and hardware costs and more. We believe that 2011 will be a pivotal year for government IT.

Thom Rubel is vice president for research at IDC Government Insights.