Massive Chasm In Asia's Public Sector IT Spending

IT_Sleep_Bag writes "A recent study by Springboard Research shows a massive chasm between countries in the APAC region, with countries like New Zealand and Australia investing up to USD 200 per capita on IT, while India and China spend a dismal USD 1. SDA Asia speaks to Dane Anderson of Springboard Research to explore the reasons for the wide gulf and why he believes India and China will grow the fastest in this regard."

Comments

Duh?

[toby]

"What is the reason behind this chasm?"

(!!??) Look at the math: India has 1.2 billion, many of which are at subsistence level; Australia, a "developed" country, has 20 million fattening middle class aspirants. A 200:1 ratio reflects that reality.

And of the $200 spent per head in lazy republics, 90% of it goes down the drain (FBI's Keystone Cops IT fiasco; name-your-favourite-boondoggle; even Russia caught quickly on to the overspend-and-underdeliver game, it's a great way to embezzle). Raising indigent populations to Western standards of waste is not really helpful, is it.

Anyway, if you didn't get Carr's memo: IT's a commodity now. The industry's shrinkage can't be blamed on nine-whatever or the "War on Common Sense"; the gold rush days are OVER. Spend less and spend better (hint: not on *cough* MS junk; hint: don't reinvent - unless it's to take business from MS :)

Re:Duh?

[HMC CS Major]

Not MS, and don't reinvent unless it's to take business from MS? Is this an anti-MS rant or real IT advice?

Spending less and transferring entire enterprises to new platforms are mutually exclusive. Face it: retraining 10,000 employees on alternative operating systems won't be nearly as cost effective as maintaining the existing Windows installs, so the desktops will remain Windows for the foreseeable future. You keep AD, but you can roll in Exchange and SQL Server alternatives, perhaps Office alternatives for specific departments where interacting with the outside world isn't necessarily a requirement.

Remember: it's a company, not a religion. Being anti-MS may be popular on slashdot, but it's not always the smartest (or cheapest) in real business.

Explore the reasons for the wide gulf

[Anonymous Coward]

Richer countries have more to spend?

Where do I pick up my Nobel?

Massive chasm?

[Zouden]

What the hecks? Australia and NZ are completely western and the only way we can be considered part of Asia is by some vague geographical classification. We certainly associate ourselves much more closely with the US and UK than any country in Asia.

This is like saying "massive chasm in public sector IT spending between the US and Mexico!!" - well... yeah, what do you expect?

Re:Massive chasm?

[nikhilwiz]

The term Asia is a 'geographical classification'. The other end of the spectrum, which is prevalent all over the US and possibly elsewhere, is thinking the term 'Asian' just refers to peoeple from the far eastern countries and not India, Pakistan, etc. Your perception of geography is skewed when you call such classifications vague.

Re:Ok, per capital is fine, but gimme actual numbe

[andrewman327]

These numbers help put things into better perspective. Sure Australia has more money to spend, but this is far bigger than an IT issue. Soem countries provide more general services to their residents and they will naturally spend more on public IT.

From TFA:

New Zealand clearly stands out as one of the most progressive countries in the Asia Pacific region, especially when juxtaposed with India. That said, there are two main reasons why a chasm exists between the two in terms of per capita IT spending. First, when compared to the majority of countries in the AP region, the New Zealand government plays a much more significant role in the life of its citizens in terms of healthcare, education and legislation, with trickles down to a larger pool of funds per capita for IT investment. Second, the population of NZ is vastly smaller than that of India's. As such, in a large country like India the investments are spread across a larger pool of people, which of course leads to lower public sector spending per capita.

Doesn't talk about purchasing power

[starkravingmad]

The article doesn't mention whether costs are calculated at Purchasing Power Parity or not.. $1 in India goes a lot further (e.g., labour costs) than in Australia or New Zealand. I think (look up the CIA world factbook to verify) that Real US $1 = about $6 at PPP in India. Also IT systems have very low marginal costs to usage - e.g., it costs a little more to serve 1 billion people than to serve 20 million - the relationship is not linear. Here's an example of what your IT dollars will bring you in Australia - my company accepts customer applications online - what actually happens is that your form gets emailed to a person on the fifth floor whose job it is to fill an aplication form using the details in the email and then put it through the normal fulfillment process. We spent tens of thousands of dollars on that 'system'.

Growth prediction based on not-so-deep insight

[count0]

"why he believes India and China will grow the fastest in this regard."

Ummm... It's not that hard to see why people at the start of an adoption curve (china) will have faster growth than people who've plateaued (Australia). Given that if you spend $1 more per capita, in China that's 100% growth, and in Australia 0.5% growth...

Flawed study criteria

[jkrise]

IT Spending cannot be directly related to the spread of IT and it's benefits. Let's take the case of the Indian Railways (the biggest employer in the World) and the Indian Insurance business (a mammoth organisation).

The ticket reservation system in Indian Railways uses a dumb-terminal front end attached to dot-matrix printers, with Unix systems in the backend... I'm not sure about the databse and the progrmming language though. Now, IT spending-wise, the Railways probably spends about 1% (no kidding) of the money that would've been needed for a Windows-Citirx-thinclient-IBM consulting-broadband-interconnect-firewall-data-ce nter solution for the same performance. IBM's efforts to sell multi-purpose thin-clients and migrate to DB2 on AIX have failed. (The online reservation system allegedly runs .Net and Flash, and is quite slow and clumsy though).

The Life Insurance Corporation of India recently decided to shut down Windows on all their systems and networks (they were fed up with the ServicePack Oriented Architecture) and tied up with RedHat for thousands of PCs. A ten-fold savings on licensing costs (and IT spending) ensued.

So basically, I would reckon the study methodology and criteria were flawed. Asia has a much bigger ratio of Linux and Unix systems (and Lotus Notes as well, surprisingly) compared to the rest of the World. The much higher GDP and purchasing power distorts the study method.

For instance, a licensed version of MS Office Professional would easily be 3-months wages of a middle-class Indian. This is NOT the right way to compare IT penetration and usage.

The thing is..

[paxmaniac]

You can probably get 200 Indian programmers for the price of one Australian programmer.

Comparing raw dollars (especially dollars per capita) just isn't very informative.

Japan?

[atomicstrawberry]

I notice that Japan isn't included in these figures. Odd that Australia and New Zealand have been shoved in with Asia, yet one of the major countries in the consumer technology sector is absent. Their tally should be reasonably high, I'd imagine.