Driven by Digital India, government will spend $7 billion on IT in 2016, says Gartner

The government in India will spend $7 billion on IT products and services in 2016, an increase of 3.1 percent over 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. This forecast includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices and telecom services. Government comprises state and local governments and national government. IT services (which includes consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support) is expected to grow 8.8 percent in 2016 to reach $1.6 billion – with the business process outsourcing sub-segment growing by 22 percent. Telecom services will be a $1.5 billion market, with the mobile network services sub-segment recording the fastest growth of 3.5 percent in 2016 to reach $793 million. “Government spending on software will total $938 million in 2016, a 9.9 percent increase from 2015,” said Moutusi Sau principal research analyst at Gartner. “The software market will be led by growth in infrastructure.” Internal services will grow 5.8 percent in 2016 to reach $1.5 billion. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organization. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems. “The ‘Digital India’ initiative continues to be drive investments in the government, led by access of government services on mobile devices (part of the mobile government), and expansion on broadband services,” said Sau.