Leaked documents clarify classified IT spending

Classified IT spending appears to be significantly higher than has been indicated in recent budget requests, according to documents disclosed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and published in the Washington Post.

President Barack Obama's budget request for 2014 included at least $5.4 billion in classified IT spending. This is the difference between the overall $39.6 billion request for Defense Department IT funds, and the $34.1 billion request published in the summary on the IT Dashboard maintained by the Office of Management and Budget.

On the leaked classified budget documents covering 2013, the leading intelligence agencies received $4.7 billion for enterprise IT expenditures. But a tally of mission-related classified IT spending exploded that figure to more than $8 billion. (See table below.)

(The comparison between 2013 allocations and the 2014 request is relevant because government-wide, IT spending is largely flat.)

Outside of enterprise spending, the big buckets for intelligence community IT money are computer network operations and cryptanalytic IT at the National Security Agency, at $1 billion and $247 million respectively. Computer network operations at the Central Intelligence Agency cost $685 million.

This tally doesn't include categories of spending that have IT components, including telecommunications intercept infrastructure, drone aircraft and other surveillance technology.

Mission-related classified IT spending, 2013