What's in Store for Government IT in 2012? One Expert Weighs in.

What's coming in 2012 is so obvious it can hardly be called a prediction: bigger data and smaller budgets. The idea of government agencies making IT investments to contend with the data explosion in a budget environment this tight may seem paradoxical, but it makes more sense than the alternative. So much sense that it just might happen.

First, the 2012 landscape. U.S. government IT spending was $78.9 billion in 2011 and is likely to be flat next year. After that, the numbers get murky; the 2011 Budget Control Act mandates $1.2 trillion in spending reductions in defense, nondefense and Medicare beginning in 2013, all of which will involve cuts to technology programs.

At the same time, data volume is doubling every 18 months and the nature of that data is changing. Before the deluge, most digital information was in the form of structured data. A good example of this is information stored in databases that can be easily sorted, queried and analyzed. Now the growing majority of digital information is in the form of unstructured data -- bits and bytes like emails, files, photos and videos. This kind of data requires sophisticated management and analysis...