Government expenditure on information technology products and services will touch the $7 billion mark in 2016, a 3.1 per cent rise over 2015, according to a study by Gartner. This includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services.

Government comprises State and local governments and the Central government.

IT services (which includes consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation and hardware support) is expected to grow 8.8 per cent in 2016 to reach $1.6 billion, with the business process outsourcing sub-segment growing by 22 per cent, Gartner report said.

Upbeat on telecom Telecom services will be a $1.5-billion market, with the mobile network services sub-segment recording the fastest growth of 3.5 per cent in 2016 to reach $793 million.

“Government spending on software will total $938 million in 2016, a 9.9 per cent increase from 2015. The software market will be led by growth in infrastructure,” said Moutusi Sau principal research analyst at Gartner.

Internal services will grow 5.8 per cent in 2016 to reach $1.5 billion. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organisation. The information services staff include all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems.

“The ‘Digital India’ initiative continues to be drive investments in the government, led by access of government services on mobile devices (part of the mobile government), and expansion on broadband services,” said Sau.

rajesh.kurup@thehindu.co.in

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW