  Deep inelastic scattering (DIS) total cross section data at small-x as
measured by the HERA experiments is well described by Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK)
evolution in the leading order dipole picture. Recently the full
Next-to-Leading Order (NLO) dipole picture total cross sections have become
available for DIS, and a working factorization scheme has been devised which
subtracts the soft gluon divergence present at NLO. We report our recently
published work in which we make the first comparisons of the NLO DIS total
cross sections to HERA data. The non-perturbative initial condition to BK
evolution is fixed by fitting the HERA reduced cross section data. As the NLO
results for the DIS total cross section are currently available only in the
massless quark limit, we also fit a light-quark-only cross section constructed
with a parametrization of published total and heavy quark data. We find an
excellent description of the HERA data. Since the full NLO BK equation is
computationally expensive, we use a number of beyond LO prescriptions for the
evolution that include most important higher order corrections enhanced by
large transverse logarithms, including the recent version of the equation
formulated in terms of the target momentum fraction.
