New business opportunities with public sector ICT spending set to grow, despite federal cutbacks: IDC

Australian state and federal governments are forecast to spend more over the coming years on information and communications technology (ICT) spending, according to new IDC forecasts.

The report, titled Australia Government ICT 2013–2017 Forecast and Analysis, predicts the increase in spending will come despite an increasingly conservative fiscal environment for many government agencies.

The forecast predicts state and federal ICT spending will reach $5.61 billion across the state and federal public services, with that figure set to balloon to $5.876 billion by 2014.

This increase represents a five-year compound annual growth rate of 1.3%, with the rate far higher for storage hardware of 6.9%, and software (including cloud, analytics and big data) of 5.7%.

The report predicts streamlining service provision, overall operational cost savings and ICT modernisation will be the key drivers of government ICT spending over the coming years.

IDC Asia/Pacific head of vertical markets Emilie Ditton says government mobile devices and services are also likely to be a key growth driver.

“The Australian government ICT market will continue to be defined by budgetary constraint.

“Technologies that are able to support real productivity improvement on the one hand and those that can support new models for citizen engagement and service delivery will continue to receive focus of government investment.

“Outside of anticipated mobility and cloud investments, another important area of investment we are going to see will be associated with the government’s increasing realisation of the importance of citizen data, and particularly the use of analytics for the delivery of intelligent services and more targeted policy development.”