The Federal Budget Crunch: What Agencies Are Up Against This Year

Federal agencies are navigating an increasingly complex budget environment as fiscal year deadlines approach and the next budget cycle begins.Phillip Swagel, Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), explains how overlapping timelines and funding uncertainties are shaping the financial management landscape across government.

Swagel describes the current moment as a complicated period for agencies. Fiscal year 2026 appropriations are still not fully completed, while planning for fiscal year 2027 is already underway.

At the same time, the government is experiencing a partial shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. These overlapping events create additional challenges for agencies trying to track spending and prepare for future budgets.

Innovation in Government: Delivering Decision Advantage in a Contested Maritime Environment

Broadcasting from WEST 2026 in San Diego, this special episode of Innovation in Government explores the cutting-edge digitization and modernization efforts transforming the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and the broader Department of Defense. Through in-depth interviews with military leaders and top industry experts, we examine the critical shift toward data-driven decision-making, the drive for open architectures, and the race to achieve seamless interoperability from the enterprise down to the tactical edge. Viewers will gain unique insights into how the services are overcoming technical debt, leveraging commercial-off-the-shelf technologies, and preparing warfighters for future conflicts through advanced training continuums and accelerated sensor-to-shooter kill chains.

The Intelligent Border: Fast. Agile. Secure.

The latest episode of Modernizing Government: The EY Insight explores how data, cloud, and emerging technologies are reshaping the mission of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the federal government at large. Francis Rose hosts discussions with George Kaczmarskyj, Principal for Government and Public Sector at EY, and Mark James, Executive Director of the Enterprise Cloud Services Division at CBP.

Filmed on location at the EY Center for Government Modernization, the conversations highlight lessons learned from commercial sectors like financial services, the importance of data governance and trust, CBP’s cloud migration journey, the adoption of AI and edge computing, and the future of secure, agile border operations. Together, they shed light on how a fast, agile, and secure intelligent border is being built.

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