Computers in the U.S. Government

Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Research Services at the National Archives at College Park, MD.

The unclassified IT budget for civilian agencies in 2024 is about $74 billion dollars and, in some agencies, virtually every employee works at a computer – be it a tablet, a laptop, a desktop, or even a supercomputer.  There are probably millions of computers of various types in use in the U.S. Government.

In 1966, the Federal Government’s entire computer budget was $2 billion dollars (a HUGE sum for those days, equivalent of almost $20 billion dollars today) and there were only 2600 computers in the government.

Today, among other things, computers are making it possible for the U.S. Government to:

• send people and satellites into space
• make significant strides in medical research
• add several billions of dollars to government revenue through improved tax administration
• administer the huge and complex Social Security and Medicare programs
• speed government benefit programs, at much less cost
• design better and less costly infrastructure.

What may be surprising is that this list of benefits is drawn almost word-for-word from the following Presidential directive of June 28, 1966. 

Coincidentally, or maybe not, at the same time, the Subcommittee on Census and Government Statistics of the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service planned to hold hearings on the use of electronic data systems.  See here for an earlier post relating to that.

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Source: President Lyndon B. Johnson to the Heads of Department and Agencies, June 28, 1966, file FSV 3-1, 1964-66 Subject-Numeric File, RG 59: General Records of the Department of State.  I appreciate the assistance of Jeffery Hartley in the preparation of this post.