UK leading Europe in public sector IT spend
Analyst report gives much welcomed boost to the channel
Channel players were buoyed last week by a research claiming that the UK spends more on public sector IT than any other European country.
Analyst firm Kable's latest report ICT spend in the European Public Sector, estimated that total expenditure on ICT in the European public sector will be in excess of 87bn euros this year, and is forecast to rise to 94bn euros by 2007. Total expenditure for the UK is estimated at 20.1bn euros, 40 per cent more than either France of Germany.
The high level of UK spend is mainly due to big investments being made in e-government and back office infrastructure, such as the £6bn Connecting for Health programme and the £3.5bn Defence Information Infrastructure deal.
"From the larger countries, the UK is by far the biggest spender, and has emerged as the leader in the breadth and diversity of its investment in public sector IT," said Kable analyst Scott Bryan. "The UK is one of the most advanced countries in terms of automating its services. The UK pursues technology that other countries don't. One thing that stands out in the report is the UK government's commitment to use technology to modernise its processes."
Pete Mistry, technical sales consultant, secure infrastructure, at public sector VAR, Eclipse Group, said: "Six months ago I was complaining that smaller firms like us weren't getting a look in with public sector IT projects, but now we're doing a lot of business in the public sector.
"The great thing is that government departments are actually being fairly receptive to us now. The public sector is certainly a key market for us," he added.
Pete Renson, director at local government reseller NRJ Consulting, said: "If you look at the structure of local government in the UK compared to European countries, the UK has got more individual entities that are responsible for their own spend. The UK government does need to spend a lot to bring its IT infrastructure up to speed."