Executive branch budget pact includes IT investments, less for DOGE

Senate and House appropriators are eyeing White House work on IT, artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure — and a continued presence for DOGE — as part of their fiscal year 2026 bill to fund Financial Services and General Government.

On the executive branch funding released Sunday for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, lawmakers agreed on $124.3 million for salaries and expenses in the White House’s Office of Administration, with up to $12.8 million used for IT modernization. No more than $10 million of that IT pie should be spent for security and continuity of operations improvements. 

The Information Technology Oversight and Reform (ITOR) bucket, which historically has supported the Office of the Federal CIO and the now-defunct U.S. Digital Service, would receive $8 million under the new budget. House Appropriations Republicans said in their press release that that money would be used to fund the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has replaced USDS as the U.S. DOGE Service. That $8 million figure is a fraction of the Trump administration’s initial ask.

In its June 2025 budget proposal, the White House requested $45 million in funding for DOGE, the Elon Musk-created group that led the decimation of the federal workforce in the early days of the Trump administration under the auspices of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse of agencies, but ended up raising government spending. The White House also sought $19 million for the ITOR account.

Beyond DOGE and general IT modernization, congressional appropriators came to an agreement on how the White House should approach AI-ready data, writing that the House and Senate recognize “the critical need” for it to enable the adoption of AI and machine learning across the federal government. 

The lawmakers’ agreement “encourages” the Office of Management and Budget to produce guidance that requires agencies to “assess, structure, and modernize their datasets for AI applications.” Within 180 days of the budget’s enactment, OMB would be directed to brief the Senate and House Appropriations committees on its progress on the guidance.

The appropriators additionally expressed concerns about the federal government’s current approach to cloud infrastructure, which they said “does not promote a secure and interoperable environment that enables Federal agencies to adapt to technological advances and save taxpayer dollars.”

To better “keep pace with China” on multi-cloud technology and computational resources, the Senate and House lawmakers direct OMB to submit a report to the appropriations committees within 180 days “on opportunities across the Federal government to procure multi-cloud systems.” That report should include an assessment of agency procurement practices and recommendations on policies “that need to be modified to encourage multi-vendor and secure, interoperable IT environments, and an associated timeline.” 

Finally on the White House tech front, the budget agreement provides $20 million for the Office of the National Cyber Director, which has been officially led since August by Sean Cairncross, a former Republican National Committee official and Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO. The fiscal 2025 budget appropriated $19.1 million for the ONCD.