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Obama 2011 Budget Request Outlines Funding for DHS, FCC (2/1/10)
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano unveiled the department’s $56.3 billion fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget request.
President Obama’s budget request for DHS strengthens the ongoing work across in each of DHS’ five major mission areas — preventing terrorism and enhancing security, securing and managing the nation’s borders, smart and effective enforcement of immigration laws, safeguarding and securing cyberspace, and ensuring resiliency to disasters. The proposed budget also furthers Secretary Napolitano’s major reform goals to continue institutionalizing a new culture of efficiency and fiscal discipline at DHS, a DHS statement said. The full DHS FY 2011 budget request can be found at www.dhs.gov/xabout/budget.
The president proposed FY 2011 funding for the FCC of $352.5 million. The requested FY 2011 funding level would fund an emergency response interoperability center. The budget would also include monies to implement the national broadband plan; continue to manage the nation’s spectrum use; overhaul the FCC’s data systems and processes; continue to improve the FCC’s operations using improved technology and support the FCC’s public-safety and cyber-security role, among other objectives.
The FY 2011 budget proposal includes these initiatives:
• Continuing the national broadband plan and broadband map;
• Implementing a spectrum inventory initiative and emergency response interoperability center;
• Consumer information programs, seizing the opportunities provided by new media and advanced information technology;
• New investment in the people and technology necessary to overhaul the agency’s antiquated systems for data collection, processing, analysis and dissemination; and
• New expertise and tools required to ensure that the FCC is able to be a model of excellence, openness and transparency domestically and internationally.
The request would also provide funds to cover mandatory increases in salaries and benefits and inflationary increases for contractual services.
The FCC budget proposal includes a spectrum fee on unauctioned spectrum licenses. The administration predicts that fee collections would begin in 2010 and total $4.8 billion through 2020. White House budget proposals typically contain a spectrum fee proposal, but Congress has always nixed the proposal. The budget would also extend indefinitely the FCC's authority to auction spectrum, which currently expires Sept. 30, 2012.
The administration also has called for a $60 million increase in funding for the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), $45 million of which go toward NIST's laboratories. The NIST lab in Boulder, Colo., houses the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program.
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