Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has proposed 10-year budget cuts to the ODNI in the double digits of billions of dollars, he said Monday at the GEOINT geospatial intelligence conference in San Antonio.
“We’re all going to have to give at the office,” Clapper said. “And we in the IC (intelligence community) are going to contribute to reducing the deficit, which itself presents a profound threat to national security.”
According to Reuters, the DNI had requested $55 billion in appropriations for fiscal year 2012, which started Oct. 1.
Congress has not approved a full-year funding bill and the government is running on short-term funding measures.
Clapper told the audience there was “huge potential” for savings in information technology. The ODNI’s 2012 budget request sets aside 20-25 percent for IT. He said IT cuts would mean making use of cloud computing.
Clapper said intelligence agency heads hope to get about half of their planned savings through improvements in IT efficiency.
