Bringing back its focus on technology, the Union government is set to shell out as much as $7.3 billion in IT in 2021, a jump of 9.4% as compared to 2020, said a Gartner report released on Tuesday.
According to the research firm, the Centre’s plan, as proposed in the Union budget, to conduct the first-ever digital census this year will be instrumental in bumping up the government’s IT spending in India.
“The government in India will shift from being a cautious spender to opening the fiscal floodgates in 2021. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the Indian government’s digital transformation projects were sidelined in 2020. The weakening economy forced the Indian government into reducing their IT spend across all segments last year,” Apeksha Kaushik, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.
Further key government initiatives including Atmanirbhar Bharat, Make in India and Digital India initiatives will continue to remain top priority projects for the Centre. “The software segment, which includes the application, infrastructure, and vertical-specific software, will experience the strongest growth in 2021,” Gartner said.
The report further claims that the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services and blockchain will be major focus areas for the Indian government with more emphasis on ethics and privacy. “Investments to address digital equity, creating India specific standards for 5G and granting access to remote citizen services will be critical,” Kaushik said.
