Governments spending less on tech: report

Governments are spending less on IT during 2013 than they were a year ago, according to a new report from Gartner.

The report estimates government spending in 2013 will approach half a trillion dollars, down 0.1 percent on the previous year. This rate of spending was lower than initial estimates, which put government IT spending as growing 0.2 percent during 2013.

The top priorities for government IT spending are mobility, infrastructure modernisation, and cloud computing. Interest also remains strong in the areas of big data and analytics.

“Cloud computing, in particular, continues to increase compared with prior years, driven by economic conditions and a shift from capital expenditure to operational expenditure, as well as potentially more important factors such as faster deployment and reduced risk,” said Christine Arcaris, research director at Gartner.

“Other areas, such as data centre consolidation, are lower on the list than in previous years, perhaps demonstrating that they may have met resistance in a more strategic roll-out. Vendors should be ready to reposition offerings according to these changing market dynamics.”

While cloud remains an area of intense interest for governments, the focus of governmental cloud strategy is shifting, from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).

Governments also remain cagey about bring your own device (BYOD), with just over half of all respondents indicating employees are allowed to bring and use their own technology on the job. The limiting factors on BYOD in the government space include concerns about security, along with device and policy governance.

Big data is starting to gain real traction as government entities look to tackle fraud, waste and abuse, along with the capabilities to address revenue holes.

“While agencies are assessing how to manage, leverage and store big data, not many have addressed the challenges associated with the utilisation of content and the issues associated with merging large amounts of data onto a single platform,” Arcaris said.