Government is expected to invest around R35 billion in ICT in 2007/8 - a 3% to 5% increase from last year's spend, says ForgeAhead's head of research Adrian Schofield.
This prediction comes ahead of finance minister Trevor Manuel's annual budget speech in February.
The spend will be spread across national, provincial and local government departments, ranging from billions of rand, allocated to high-spending departments, like the South African Revenue Service, to a few hundred thousand rand, allocated to rural municipalities.
Last year, research house BMI-TechKnowledge said national government would likely be allocated 46% of the total allocation, a drop from 54% in 2003/4. Provincial government, says BMI-T, will likely see an increase from 27% in 2003/4, to 32% in 2007/8, while local government could see a jump from 19% in 2003/4, to 22% in 2007/8.
ForgeAhead also predicted an increase in local government IT budget allocation in its "ICT in Local Government" research report, presented last year.
Focus areas
Meanwhile, the Government Information Technology Officer's (GITO) Council is looking at ways to optimise IT expenditure.
GITO Council chairman Mmamathe Makhekhe says the North West province, for instance, is looking at alternative ways of accessing ICT infrastructure that will improve its service delivery, without presenting ownership issues. Provincial governments will look at options such as leasing and renting of hardware and infrastructure, she explains.
"We don't want to buy things that are going to become obsolete in a couple of years, and become difficult to get rid of," she adds.
About half of all South African government IT contracts were for services, with 32% of the budget spent on hardware and 19% spent on software, BMI-T said last year.
Justice and protection services accounted for more than half of all public IT contracts, with 27% of all projects being for central government administration, 10% for economic services and infrastructure, 7% for social services and 5% for financial and administrative services.
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Government IT spend on the rise
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