Gartner Survey: 75% of Government CIO Budgets Flat or Increasing in 2013

Despite a continuing drive to lower the cost of IT services, nearly 75 percent of government IT budgets globally were reported as flat or increasing in 2013, according to the Gartner Executive Programs 2013 CIO Agenda survey.

When compared to other sectors of the economy, the relatively brighter IT budget outlook in government may be short-lived, according to Gartner analysts. Gartner's CEO and Senior Executive Survey 2013 indicates that private-sector business leaders are poised to boost investments in e-commerce, mobile, cloud, social and other major technology categories. Despite this, Gartner projects a modest compound annual growth rate of 1.3 percent for IT spending in the government and education sectors through to the end of 2017, with increased spending for IT services, software and data centers. These increases are offset by reductions in internal technology services, devices and telecom services.

CIOs in government indicated that reducing overall business costs is now more important than reducing IT costs alone, which will permit government CIOs to accelerate enterprise-scale initiatives. The business and technology priorities of government CIOs are strongly aligned with their peers from all industries globally, with a few small differences.

For the third consecutive year, reducing enterprise costs ranks among the top three business priorities for government CIOs in 2013. In conjunction with the imperative to deliver operational results and the need to modernise IT applications and infrastructure, CIOs have affirmed the means by which IT can be used to transform government agency operations and their own bottom-line accountability to do so.

The top three technology priorities in 2013 have all changed since 2012, with business intelligence and analytics moving from No. 5 to the top spot, followed by legacy modernization and IT management. By placing analytics and business intelligence at the top of the list, government CIOs are addressing government's need to proactively manage programs and services.

As part of the CIO agenda survey, strategic priorities are also investigated and ranked. Improving the government IT organization and workforce has moved to the No. 2 spot in 2013 from No. 9 in 2012, which shifts the responsibilities of CIOs and IT professionals away from most legacy technology services to underserved areas of business need.

The CIO Agenda Survey also indicated that 76 percent of government CIOs have significant leadership responsibilities outside of IT, with only 24 percent having no responsibilities beyond IT. The average tenure of government CIOs is 3.8 years, compared to an average of 4.6 years across all industries.

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