Cost Management Still A Concern For APEJ Public Sector

Although the APEJ economy has emerged noticeably stronger in the last few months, the public sector will be continuing its search for products and services that provide the best bang for the buck to better manage spending in 2011. To improve efficiency and service levels, governments in the region are expected to channel their IT budgets to initiatives that give them the best deal for the dollar in four areas: operational efficiency, business-IT alignment, risk management and citizen-centricity.

“In 2011, optimistic sentiments will be propelling the APEJ economy forward, transforming it to a market with tremendous growth potential. We believe this will change the global economic dynamics into one that is ‘multipolar’,” said Gerald Wang, Senior Market Analyst, IDC Government Insights Asia/Pacific.

In recent years, the rollout of various economic stimulus packages in the region have greatly increased infrastructure spending in the public sector and brought about notable transformations in the information and communications technology (ICT) landscape. This has led to advanced economies opening themselves to competition in ideas and experience from rising markets.

To create and cluster “hot spots” for the technology industry, APEJ governments are increasingly providing soft and hard national infrastructure to create sustainable cities. This includes creating a critical mass of advanced knowledge sources (universities, and advanced public and corporate research labs), and attracting venture capital investments, entrepreneurial talents, knowledge workers, specialised professional services and sophisticated end users. Governments are also empowering institutions with capabilities to enforce intellectual property rights.

“To cope with progressively more borderless and collaborative business environments, APEJ public sector organisations need to achieve functional ICT integration and operational transformation agility,” said Wang.

Highlights of the report “IDC Government Insights Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) Public Sector 2011 Top 10 Predictions” include:

• As the world economy evolves into one that is “multipolar”, the APEJ public sector is expected to surge ahead with a strong 7.1% year-on-year (YoY) projected ICT growth in 2011.

• Governments in the APEJ region are increasingly driving sustainable economic growth within their jurisdictions instead of outsourcing. Lately, IDC Government Insights notices that there has been a push for IT insourcing/backsourcing.

• The birth of social analytics will bring about greater intelligence into the public sector decision-making process and Web 2.0 engagements. Coupled with the growth of personalisation and conceptualisation services, public sector employees will be increasingly empowered to improve citizen interactions.

• The exploration of Business-as-a-Service (BaaS) will result in the wider adoption of private clouds. Most public sector organisations will consider the adoption of private clouds over public clouds to realise the flexibility and scalability benefits of cloud computing without compromising on security, availability and reliability threats. Although the technology risk is lower when adopting private clouds as compared to public clouds, the cost is noticeably higher.