Information technology spending by governments across the world is expected to be at $438 billion in 2020, a decrase of 0.6 per cent from the 2019 levels, according to research and advisory firm Gartner.
The only segment on pace to show growth in 2020 will be IT services and software. IT services will continue to be the largest IT spending segment among governments in 2020.
Governments are key consumer of IT, contributing nearly 16 per cent to the overall IT consumption across industries. The overall IT spending (by all industries, including Governments) is put at $2.7 trillion this year, a decline of 8 per cent over the previous year.
“Government organisations are accelerating IT spending on digital public services, public health, social services, education, and workforce reskilling of individuals, families and businesses that are heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Irma Fabular, Senior Research Director at Gartner, said.
“As government organisations globally begin to ease stay-at-home policies, some practices relevant to public health and wellness will persist, including options for telecommuting,” Fabular says.
Software spending will experience the strongest growth, with an increase of 4.5 per cent in 2020.
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,” she said.
Geographical breakup
Government IT spending in North America will be the largest globally at $191 billion in 2020, followed by Western Europe ($94 billion) and Greater China ($39 billion).