As Washington hunkers down for an era of tight federal budgets, information technology vendors can take some comfort in a projected modest rate of growth in federal IT investments. Between 2011 and 2016, federal spending for IT should grow by 12 percent, in total, for an average compound annual rate of growth of about 1.7 percent. Even with those small gains, vendors can expect agencies to be much more careful in how they go about IT procurement. Federal agencies will spend about $99 billion in total on IT in 2016, versus $93.6 billion in 2011, according to Deltek.