House reduces pool of money available for IT modernization
House lawmakers zeroed out the Technology Modernization Fund and cut two others that agencies have used to accelerate moving off legacy IT. House appropriators zeroed out the Technology Modernization Fund for the third straight year with the passage of the 2026 FSGG bill on Sept. 3. Legislators cut the Federal Citizen Services Fund and reduced the amount of money available in the IT Oversight Reform (ITOR) fund.The House bill didn’t include any explanation of why it zeroed out the TMF. The Senate has not yet moved on its version of the FSGG bill. The additional rationale for not giving the TMF any new money, besides the appropriators disdain for these types of funding mechanisms, can be found in GSA’s 2026 budget justification.The legislative proposal would let “GSA, with the approval of OMB, to collect funding from other agencies and bring that funding into the TMF,” GSA wrote in its budget justification document. “This would allow agencies to transfer resources to the TMF using funds that are otherwise no longer available to them for obligation.The TMF only has made one new award to agencies in 2025 and is estimated to have over $220 million in available funding. ... “The committee recommends $10 million for ITOR, of which $5 million is provided to the Office of the Chief Information Officer and $5 million to the United States DOGE Service (DOGE).