 "Ravi Shankar Prasad")
Local, state and national governments including government agencies are expected to spend $6.8 billion (Rs 44,856 crore) in 2015 for information technology (IT) services, a rise of 5.2 per cent from last year supported by Digital India initiative, according to a projection made by technology research and advisory firm Gartner.
For 2014, it had projected total IT spend by governments at $6.4 billion, a 4.3 per cent rise from 2013.
"The investments in the 'Digital India' initiative, led by a focus to allow access of government services on mobile devices, expansion on broadband and planning for smart cities, will be a stimulus for Indian government's IT initiatives," Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner said in the report.
This forecast includes spending on payment to It service providers, software, IT services, data center, devices and telecom services, it said.
Under the Digital India programme, all central government ministries and departments are expected to extend their services such as health services, education, judicial services etc though a digital platform.
Apart from existing e-governance projects, the government would also restructure National Informatics Centre which facilitates roll out of IT projects in government departments. Government will create positions of Chief Information Officers (CIO) in at least 10 key ministries so that various e-Governance projects could be designed, developed and implemented faster.
The Union government alone has allocated Rs 1 lakh crore for this initiative to be spent before 2019.
According to Gartner, the primary growth in 2015 will be fueled by IT services which is expected to grow at 10 per cent in 2015 to $1.6 billion (Rs 10,556 crore), up from 3.8 per cent jump projected in 2014. IT services includes consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing (BPO).
Government spending on BPO services is expected to grow by 21 per cent this year, better than 16 per cent rise forecast in 2014 while spending on application development is pegged to go up to $869 million, a 10.6 percent increase from 2014.
Telecom services will also be at par with IT expenditure and would become a $1.6 billion market, with the mobile network services sub-segment recording fastest growth of three percent in 2015 to reach $787 million for different government projects, the report said.
