Big data to colour public sector IT in 2013
Tighter scrutiny and increased pressure mean gradual adoption of tech efficiencies, says IDC
Next year will see government IT deals focused on cloud, mobility, big data, and the so-called social business phenomenon to boost efficiency and productivity, according to IDC.
The market-watcher has released its top ten predictions for public sector deals across EMEA in 2013 – unsurprisingly, those tech providers that focus on offerings that will improve efficiencies and productivity through reducing costs and redundancies are expected to do best.
"Governments will begin to adopt third-generation platforms that combine cloud, big data, mobile and social business to create higher public value. Cloud computing will be deployed as private or public cloud; [and] hybrid clouds will be less than 20 per cent of projects," IDC Government Insights wrote in a note.
According to IDC, the current volatile conditions are forcing changes in government, but budget pressures mean this change must be gradual. Agile architectural design, management, and sourcing would be critical to long-term sustainability around government services delivery.
Third-platform IT would also drive demand for federated authentication and identity initiatives – as opposed to centralised national ID programmes, it added.
According to the analyst firm, tight scrutiny on government costs will limit government IT investment in totally new offerings, as well as restrict full exisiting system replacement projects to less than 25 per cent of their IT budget.
"Strategic sourcing will become more popular as a means to reduce costs and time to market, but it will still represent less than 20 per cent of ICT spending in 2013," IDC went on to say.
However, it warned that at least 70 per cent of shared services meant to attract users outside core constituencies will not achieve their objective, and that "narrowly focused technical implementation" meant that at least 30 per cent of government big data initiatives will fail to deliver the RoI required.
The best value for money when it came to big data and analytics would be gleaned from cross-department initiatives. However, most deployments would be more localised, domain-focused projects in areas such as criminal justice, social welfare, and taxation, according to IDC.
The last two predictions were about smart-city developments. About 60 per cent of these would be around "smart energy" and intelligent transportation. IDC's second smart-cities prediction is that to succeed over the next two or three years, these projects will probably be joint ventures overseen by civic leaders.