Government ICT spending tops $5bn

As part of its commitment to open government, Special Minister of State Gary Gray has just released a battery of statistics regarding the state of ICT in the Australian Public Service, including the revelation that current ICT investment at a Federal Government level has just topped $5 billion.

According to the statistics released by the minister today, federal ICT spending rose from 2008-09, when it stood at $5.02 billion, to $5.07 billion in 2009-10. Despite the increase in spending, however, the report revealed that the total percentage of ICT spending in government in relation to total operating expenditure fell from 5.2 per cent in 2008-09 to 4.9 per cent in 2009-10.

Of this multibillion-dollar federal budget, 70 per cent of the funds are spent on business-as-usual operations, an increase of 3 per cent in lights-on spending from 2008-09.

The government also revealed in its most recent report that ICT workers in the public service totalled 6.3 per cent of the total 164,482 workers employed in 2009-10; 20 per cent of those workers are in coding, programming and development roles.

Similar figures are currently being prepared for the 2010-11 period, Gray said in a statement today, adding that they would be available in the coming months.