e-government spending
The Register had an interesting article a couple of weeks back reporting that spending on e-government is set to exceed $US1 billion by 2008. Figures on government IT spending are remarkably difficult to pin down; at the Social Study of Information Technology seminar at the LSE in April, Patrick Dunleavy estimated that over 1% of GDP was accounted for by government IT spending - quite phenomenal given that this is (according to OECD figures) 3 - 4 times what we spend on unemployment benefits.
Given this, I was interested in tracking down the research on which the Register’s piece was based to check their figures over. Having found it there is an insight into why so much is spent on IT: one paragraph of snippets for free then a staggering $5,175 to buy the 39 page ‘U.K., Government Sector, 2003-2008, eGovernment IT Spending Plans’ and the same again for the reports on France, Germany, Italy and Spain that accompany it. Crazy…
