The government in India is on pace to spend $7.2 billion on IT products and services in 2016, a 2.4 per cent rise over 2015, according to a Gartner forecast.

This includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services. Government comprises state and local governments and national government.

IT services (which includes consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support) is expected to grow 9.3 per cent in 2016 to reach $1.8 billion – with the business process outsourcing sub-segment growing 21 per cent, it said in a statement.

Telecom services will be a $1.6 billion market, with the mobile network services sub-segment recording the fastest growth with 5.2 per cent in 2016 to reach $909 million.

“Government spending on software will total $885 million in 2016, a 4.5 per cent increase from 2015,” said Moutusi Sau, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The software market will be led by growth in applications.”

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 includes all employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems.

“The e-governance initiatives to simplify digital channels and data-driven initiatives are driving investments in the government and are anticipated to grow through 2020. The ‘Digital India’ initiatives are making government processes streamlined and integrating the data repositories,” said Sau.

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