home Africa, Cyber Security, Softwares, Statistics, Technology Global Government IT Spending to Decline by 0.6% in 2020

Global Government IT Spending to Decline by 0.6% in 2020

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According to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. Worldwide government IT spending is forecast to total $438 billion in 2020, a decrease of 0.6% from 2019.Global government IT spending will represent 16% of total enterprise IT spending across all industries, which is forecast to total $2.7 trillion in 2020, a decrease of 8% year over year.

“Government organizations are accelerating IT spending on digital public services, public health, social services, education, and workforce reskilling in support of individuals, families and businesses that are heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Irma Fabular, senior research director at Gartner. “To sustain economic viability, government organizations also deployed government recovery assistance programs which assist small businesses and allow workforce reskilling.”

Software Sector to Experience Strongest Growth in 2020

The only segments on pace to show growth in 2020 will be IT services and software (see Table 1). IT services will continue to be the largest IT spending segment among governments in 2020, while software spending will experience the strongest growth, with an increase of 4.5% in 2020.

Table 1. Government IT Spending Forecast by Segment, 2019-2021, Worldwide (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

2019

Spending

2019 

Growth (%)

2020 

Spending

2020 

Growth (%)

2021 

Spending

2021

Growth (%)

IT Services 152,685 4.5 152,692 0.0 158,220 3.6
Software 99,344 9.4 103,768 4.4 112,246 8.2
Telecom Services 64,117 0.3 62,545 -2.4 64,549 3.2
Internal Services 63,305 -0.1 62,740 -0.9 60,462 -3.6
Devices 32,495 4.7 29,786 -8.3 29,742 -0.1
Data Center 28,191 -0.2 26,168 -7.2 27,084 3.5
Total 440,136 3.9 437,698 -0.5 452,303 3.3

Source: Gartner (August 2020)

“As government organizations globally begin to ease stay-at-home policies, some practices relevant to public health and wellness will persist, including options for telecommuting,” said Ms. Fabular. “Many government organizations will also introduce measures to build community and national resilience, including improving disease and other threat surveillance systems. An example is the $500 million in aid designated by the U.S. federal government in public health data surveillance and infrastructure modernization to help states and local governments develop COVID-19 tools.

Important but less urgent IT projects, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and robotics process automation (RPA), will be delayed to make room for immediate and critical spending in digital workplace support, public health response and economic growth. Adoption of cloud services will continue to accelerate while spending on in-house servers and storage will continue to decline.”

Government IT spending in North America will be the largest globally, reaching $191 billion in 2020, followed by Western Europe ($94 billion) and Greater China ($39 billion). Digital government services, data and analytics, cybersecurity as well as citizen engagement and experience will continue to be spending targets for the public sector. In addition, as illustrated by an EU policy recommendation, building health system resilience to combat future pandemics will dominate some leadership priorities. These priorities will include spending on supply chain predictability, medical research and IT infrastructure security solutions.

You can get more information in “Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending by Vertical Industry Market, Worldwide, 2018-2024, 2Q20 Update” and “Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for the Government and Education Markets, Worldwide, 2018-2024, 2Q20 Update.”

Learn how to lead organizations through the disruption of coronavirus in the Reset your business strategy section on gartner.com. Complimentary research, insights and webinars are offered to help leaders build resilience on their path to business recovery.

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James Barnley

I’m the editor of the DomainingAfrica. I write about internet and social media, focusing mainly on Domains. As a subscriber to my newsletter, you’ll get a lot of information on Domain Issues, ICANN, new gtld’s, Mobile technology and social media.