IDC Forecasts Government IT Trends for 2014

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IDC Government Insights is out with its latest forecast on government IT trends for the coming year. IDC recently held a web event going over the trend report which includes its top ten predictions covering everything from cloud services to mashups.

“While core government values like mission effectiveness, digital engagement, and operational efficiency still resonate as drivers of IT investment, a new tone is emerging in which IT is seen as an opportunity for transformation, innovation, and growth in services. In 2014, governments will focus more on innovative value creation, shifting the role of IT from back-end operations to citizen services, and performance management will be the new lens by which government services are evaluated,” said Scott Lundstrom, Group Vice President and General Manager, IDC Government Insights.

IDC places the total government IT addressable market at approximately $80.9 billion. That figure is down slightly from the nearly $82 billion market last year. Within that market IT Services have a strong lead over hardware and software, owing to increasing interest and dependence on cloud services which require much less in the way of hardware or software.

The first prediction offered by the company is the growth of mashups that deal with big data, social, cloud and mobile services in an effort to better reach constituencies. The second prediction puts the worldwide internet of things at a $1.2 trillion dollar market by 2017. CivSource previously reported on the Internet of Things from a policymaking perspective following an event held by Cisco looking at applications of the thingternet in public safety.

Even though the use of cloud services is expanding rapidly, IDC predicts that only 15% of government IT spend will go toward the cloud by 2018. By that same year, however, the company expects to see more analytics and big data projects move from the pilot phase to program phase for decision making.

Cybersecurity will also be a big focus, renewed energy on connection security to the internet of things or even just within critical infrastructure by 2017. 20% of cloud services next year will focus on consolidating enterprise infrastructures, making them more secure and more efficient. This number will increase to 45% by 2017. Finally, by next year 15% of cities will be at the opportunistic stage of smart cities program adoption, indicating greater buy in by public officials around the architecture.