Govt IT spend in India to reach $6.4 b this year: Gartner

Government IT spending in India will reach $6.4 billion in 2013, a 7 per cent increase over 2012, according to a report by Gartner.

This forecast includes spending by government (both state and regional government and central government agencies) on internal IT (including personnel), hardware, software, external IT services and telecommunications.

“IT services, which include consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, will be the largest overall spending category throughout 2017 within the government sector,” said Anurag Gupta, Research Director at Gartner.

“IT services spending is expected to grow 7.7 per cent in 2013 to reach $1.4 billion in 2013, up from $1.3 billion in 2012 — with the business process outsourcing segment growing by 15.3 per cent,” Gupta added.

Internal services will achieve the highest growth rate among the spending categories — forecast to be 12.8 per cent in 2013. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organisation.

The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems. Software will achieve a growth rate of 10.5 per cent in 2013 to reach $709 million in 2013, up from $642 million in 2012, led by growth in vertical specific software (software applications that are unique to a vertical industry.

(These are stand-alone applications that are not modules or extensions of horizontal applications).

After years of exporting IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) expertise across multiple verticals globally; many large ICT companies in India are now increasingly looking inward and targeting the Indian government ICT market.

The ICT industry will benefit from various eGovernment projects, which are part of the national eGovernance Plan, with investments in 31 mission mode projects such as Unique Identification Authority of India, which is delivering ‘Aadhaar’ numbers (a target of covering over 600 million citizens by 2014).

“The Indian government is also developing a cloud policy, namely the GI cloud (or Meghraj) which will see more clarity in the near future. Wide proliferation of affordable broadband connectivity (and mobile phones alongside) is expected to provide further opportunities in eGovernance and mobility solutions. Alongside central government projects such as excise, income tax, and post office; other state governments will also undertake initiatives in municipalities, land records and other joint initiatives like digital court rooms and common service centres,” said Gupta.

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