By Freya Purnell
According to a forecast by IDC Government Insights, Australian state and federal governments will pursue more conservative fiscal policies and wider socioeconomic initiatives in 2014, guided by three strategic principles – deliver better services, improve the efficiency of government operations and engage openly.
The report forecasts Australia’s government ICT spending to reach $5610.26 million in 2014, growing to $5876.84 million by 2017 – a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of just 1.3 per cent.
IDC has forecasted stronger growth in government ICT spend within storage (6.9 per cent five-year CAGR, and software overall (5.7 per cent five-year CAGR), which is being driven by investments in cloud, big data and analytics.
However, these figures reflect a slowdown in government ICT investment, which IDC attributes to budget constraints, a sharp slowdown in spending during the last six months of the previous Federal Government’s term, and a shift to ICT investments that deliver tighter consolidation and enhanced efficiencies.
Once governments gain greater clarity on how third platform technologies such as cloud, big data and analytics, social business and mobility will drive organisational efficiency, citizen engagement and improvements in service delivery, new engagement and business models are expected to emerge. IDC expects new ROI benchmarks will also be created to demonstrate compliance with national productivity objectives.
IDC’s Annual ANZ CIO Survey also showed that mobility will continue to be a priority for Australian governments – through utilisation of mobile as a channel for service delivery and citizen engagement, and to provide capabilities for government staff to work more flexible and productively.
IDC Government Insights research manager, Gerald Wang, said, “The Australian government sector is on a transitional track towards whole-of-government citizen-focused services through the smarter use of ICT. Federal and state governments continue the investment focus on driving productivity through the adoption of new technologies to achieve cost savings while improving services.”
Emilie Ditton, head of vertical markets, IDC Asia/Pacific, commented that budgetary constraints will continue to be a feature of the Australian government ICT market.
“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 in 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 increase realisation of the importance of citizen data, and particularly the use of analytics for the delivery of intelligent services and more targeted policy development.”
