WHAT IS A UFR?

The US Federal Government’s fiscal year runs from October 1st through September 30th and has an estimated IT budget of close to 90 billion dollars.  A significant portion of the budget is spent in the last few months of the year.  The planning for this spending begins in early summer when programs start reporting to agency leadership what funds they are not going to be able to use by the end of the fiscal year.  At the same time agencies and programs develop Unfunded Requirements (UFR) that they share with agency leadership.  These UFR requests are prioritized by leadership and begin to be funded with these identified unused program dollars that are swept up as the fiscal year-end approaches.  Therefore, it is critical to deliver your technology solution proposals now to your federal prospects and to include a recommended existing contract vehicle or program that can be leveraged to acquire the solution.  The reason for this is to ensure your prospect doesn’t lose their funding to another UFR request.  Program managers and agency personnel sometimes only have hours to respond to leadership if they can leverage end of year funds.  If leadership is not assured that the acquisition can be completed by September 30th, then they will pull the funds and leverage for another UFR request.  Work with us to make sure that you have a good plan in place to keep your funding secured.