Government CIOs Will Increase Spending on Cloud, Security and Analytics

Cloud solutions, cybersecurity and analytics are the top technologies targeted for new and additional spending by public sector CIOs in 2018, while data center infrastructure is the most commonly targeted for cost savings, according to a survey from Gartner.

Sixteen percent of government CIOs said they plan to increase spending on business intelligence (BI) and analytics (16 percent) and data management (6 percent) in. Gartner's 2018 CIO Agenda Survey gathered data from 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and across major industries, including 461 government CIOs. Government respondents are segmented into national or federal; state or province (regional); local; and defence and intelligence, to identify trends specific to each tier.

Digital transformation is the top-ranked business priority among government CIOs overall, followed by security and governance. The survey found that digital business/digital transformation is more important for government (first priority for 18 percent of respondents) than for all industries (17 percent), with the exception of defence and intelligence agencies (six percent). Private sector companies ranked it second, after growth/market share. The next three business priorities for government are security, safety and risk (13 percent); governance, compliance and regulations (12 percent); and technology initiatives/improvements (11 percent).

In response to the question "Which technology investment is most crucial to achieving your organization’s mission?" cloud and BI/analytics were mentioned by 19 percent and 18 percent of government CIOs respectively, followed by infrastructure/data centre at 11 percent. National and federal CIOs are the exception, placing customer relationship management as a distant third.

Top New Tech Spending

While only five percent of government CIOs considered security and risk as crucial to achieving the organization's mission, 17 percent expect to boost spending in cyber/information security. This indicates that security is not a competitive differentiator for government, but additional spending over historical levels in this area is warranted as a response to relentless attempts to exploit system vulnerabilities.