The Government Accountability Office has found that officials at federal agencies tend to limit their expenditures early in the fiscal year due to continuing resolutions, sequestration and other budget uncertainties.

GAO said Wednesday the finding is based on the assessment of its testimonies and reports on agency budgets from 2009 through 2016.

The report showed that agencies operating under CR deferred contracts and recruitment as well as transitioned grant cycles and contracts to the latter part of the fiscal year to prevent repetitive work.

GAO also evaluated the effects of an appropriations lapse in 2013 and found that agencies experienced programmatic and budget delays as a result of the government shutdown.

The congressional watchdog also cited legal controls that affect how agencies can spend the obligated funds throughout the fiscal year and one of those is the availability period of funds and other fiscal characteristics.

An agency’s inability to appropriate the current budget to address requirements in future fiscal years is also listed as one of the legal constraints.

GAO also found that the Antideficiency Act and the Impoundment Control Act are examples of laws that require agencies to avoid “both over-obligating and under-obligating funds” appropriated for the fiscal year.

The Energy Department has unveiled a new program that aims to help companies develop lightweight materials that could withstand harsh environments.

DOE said Tuesday industry participants in the High Performance Computing for Materials Program will have access to computational resources and assets at department-funded national laboratories.

The HPC4Mtls program will also offer tools designed to simulate, model and predict materials behavior as well as expertise in the additive manufacturing, computational fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, kinetics and materials modeling areas.

DOE will screen interested companies through a two-phase competitive process and ask participants to cover at least 20 percent of project costs.

The department plans to host a workshop on Oct. 12 in Pennsylvania to discuss the program with commercial, academic and government stakeholders.

The program is sponsored by the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and part of the department’s HPC4 Energy Innovation Initiative.

Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, top uniformed acquisition officer at the U.S. Air Force, has said the service branch may pick an industry team for the T-X trainer aircraft replacement program ahead of contract award if Congress extends a continuing resolution beyond Dec. 8, Defense News reported Tuesday.

“We will look at options to see if we can award with a delayed start,” Bunch said Tuesday at the Air Force Association’s annual conference.

“There are ways, we have done it before, when you award a contract and you delay the start of the contract for a few months,” he added.

His statement came a day after Saab announced plans to set up a production facility in the U.S. for a trainer aircraft the Sweden-based company and its partner Boeing proposed for the T-X program.

Other industry teams vying for the T-X contract include Lockheed Martin and Korean Aerospace Industries; and Leonardo DRS.

The military branch intends to award the T-X contract by the end of 2017 and expects to spend approximately $2 billion on the program in the next five years.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said earlier that a long-term CR could delay the contract award for the T-X program that seeks to replace the service’s fleet of T-38 planes.

The new Senate-passed defense spending package contains a bill that would fund projects to modernize government information technology systems.

A press release published Monday on Sen. Jerry Moran’s (R-Kansas) website said the upper chamber inserted the Modernizing Government Technology Act as an amendment to the  National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018.

The NDAA was approved by the Senate through a 89-8 vote Monday and would authorize $700 billion in Defense Department spending.

MGT Act would create IT working capital funds at 24 federal government agencies and permit the agencies to finance IT modernization efforts using savings achieved through upgraded IT systems.

The legislation would also establish a centralized modernization fund within the Treasury Department for the head of the General Services Administration to distribute across agencies following consultation with a board of federal IT professionals.

Sens. Moran and Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) introduced the MGT Act with support from Sens. Steve Daines (R-Montana) and Mark Warner (D-Virginia) as well as Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA).