Australian govt IT spending to decline in 2020: Gartner

Government IT spending in Australia is predicted to decline by 7.6 percent in 2020, research from Gartner reveals.

Government IT spending is expected to reach $7.7 billion in 2020, compared to $8.3 billion in 2019, but is forecast to bounce back in 2021 by 5.8 percent to $8.1 billion.

Spending on devices, including PCs, tablets and smartphones, are hit the hardest with a 20.5 percent decline, followed by data centre technology at an 18.1 percent decline. Telecom services is third at a 12.1 percent decline.

The only segment that will show growth is in software, where a 1.9 percent increase is forecast from $1.88 billion to $1.92 billion in 2020.

Globally, the decrease is at a lower rate at 0.6 percent to US$438 billion, compared to $440 billion in 2019. Devices and data centre spending were also the hardest hit segments and software was also the only segment to post growth.

Gartner senior research director Irma Fabular said: “Government organisations are accelerating IT spending on digital public services, public health, social services, education, and workforce reskilling in support of individuals, families and businesses that are heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“To sustain economic viability, government organisations also deployed government recovery assistance programs which assist small businesses and allow workforce reskilling.”

Fabular added that practices relevant to public health and wellness will remain, including options for telecommuting, as government organisations start to ease stay-at-home policies.

“Many government organisations will also introduce measures to build community and national resilience, including improving disease and other threat surveillance systems,” Fabular said.

“Important but less urgent IT projects, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and robotics process automation (RPA), will be delayed to make room for immediate and critical spending in digital workplace support, public health response and economic growth.”

“Adoption of cloud services will continue to accelerate while spending on in-house servers and storage will continue to decline.”