Govt IT spending to grow 8.6% to $8.3 bn in 2022: Gartner

The Indian government’s IT spending is projected to grow to a total $8.3 billion in 2022, which is an increase of 8.6 per cent from 2021, stated Gartner Inc in a report. Digitalisation initiatives of the government took a giant leap in 2020 due to the pandemic. Now with vaccination rates increasing, the government will focus on digitalisation initiatives, said the IT research and advisory firm.

Senior principal research analyst at Gartner, Apeksha Kaushik, said, “Digitalisation initiatives of Indian government organisations took a giant leap in 2020 because of the global pandemic. The pandemic forced the government to shift priorities as supply chains and revenue streams dwindled,” further adding that the government is likely to focus on efforts such as ‘citizen experience’ and digital inclusion.

However, the report states that as individual digital solutions do not correlate with overall digital maturity, the Indian government is behind in digital maturity as compared to its western counterparts. The IT spending growth will be driven by moving from legacy systems to digital, the report forecasted.

Digital licensing, online judicial proceedings, digital taxation are some initiatives that underwent a knee-jerk reaction during the pandemic in 2020. However, the full potential is yet to be realised. The Gartner report predicts that the forthcoming 5G spectrum auction will aim at solving some of these challenges related to digital inclusion in 2022.

Except for telecom services, all government organisations are expected to hike up spending on IT segments. In fact, the software segment is expected to achieve the highest growth of 24.7 per cent in 2022.

Now, as India prepares for 5G rollout, the telecom market would require deep pockets to make an impact on innovation, quality of services and pricing. Hence, telecom services would see lower investments on IT.

“In India, with increasing investments on cloud and cyber-security, the prime focus of IT spending by government organisations is on building collaborative partnerships, along with technology solutions,” said Kaushik.

With increasing cloud deployments and implementations, privacy and security continue to be the government’s top concerns. The report predicts that key technologies that government will prioritise their spending on in 2022 will be digital workplace, business continuity solutions, business intelligence, data analytics, responsible AI, blockchain, improved data privacy and data sharing tools.

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