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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."
(!!??) 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 :)
you had me at #!
So basically that means that China is spending over one billion USD -- $1,306,313,812 according to Google. Whereas Australia is spending $4,018,087,400 (assuming 20,090,437 people again, according to Google). And this means that New Zealand, with 4,035,461 people is spending $807,092,800. Lastly, India with 1,080,264,388 people (thanks Jeeves... um, I mean ASK.com) is spending just over one billion as well.
To summarize:
China: $1,306,313,812
India: $1,080,264,388
Australia: $4,018,087,400
New Zealand: $807,092,800
The actual numbers are more helpful.
Sure, it looks like Australia is outspending China nearly 4:1. My guess is that looking at per capita is irrelevant.
Richer countries have more to spend?
Where do I pick up my Nobel?
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?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
From TFA:
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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'.
"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...
from the springboard research website, the actual tally is:
Country Per Capital Public Sector IT Spending
New Zealand $198.78
Australia $193.82
Singapore $152.89
Hong Kong $67.22
Korea $52.96
Taiwan $45.22
Malaysia $21.92
Thailand $7.41
China $3.67
Philippines $2.94
India $1.29
Indonesia $1.10
china spends $3.67 and not $1. there is a big difference given their huge population.
all in all
Country Total Spending
China 4,794,171,690.04
Australia 3,893,928,499.34
Korea 2,515,600,000.00
India 1,413,004,073.55
Taiwan 1,035,284,044.48
New Zealand 802,168,937.58
Singapore 676,648,330.80
Malaysia 534,538,007.36
Thailand 478,920,118.95
Hong Kong 463,729,672.92
Indonesia 269,998,012.90
Philippines 258,300,970.62
* population figures from google and cia.
from springboard research: "A key focus of this report was to dive deeper into the Public Sector in each country to measure the Sub-Vertical Industries within the Public Sector such as Defence, Healthcare, Social Services, Taxation/Finance, etc... and to provide granular data on each of these Sub-Verticals." i don't think that you should spend a lot for it in those areas as the money will be better used for doctors, nurses, medical equipment, medicine, equipment and other stuff.
this does not include private it spending that may also complement some items as what the public sector is spending.
* sorry, i don't know much of html and don't want to spend time learning how to format the tables properly as i redid this comment and calculations for a couple of times.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
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).
e 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 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-c
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.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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.
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.
New Zealand and Australia investing up to USD 200 per capita on IT, while India and China spend a dismal USD 1
The important thing here is not so much how much they invest in IT, but how they invest it. I mean, seeing how the public sector wasts billions of GBP here in UK on badly designed, badly executed mammoth projects that invariably miss all deadlines, go over budget by several orders of magnitude and then fail, I would rather have them not spend the money at all.
One big factor in why these projects always fail is that IT jobs in the public sector are underpaid, compared to the private sector, so they mostly get the people who couldn't cut in the private sector. And those people make one stupid decision after another. I'd rather see the public IT salaries top those of the private sector; that way at least there would be a chance that our tax money isn't just wasted by incompetents.
Also think of the manpower you can buy with that money. Because a lot of that money goes not just into hardware, but also admins, training, support staff, programmers, etc.
In China an average salary is IIRC around 1000$ per year. In Australia, a quick googling says that in 2000-2001 it was $34,745. It's probably risen quite a bit more since then, but let's say a very conservative estimate of $35,000 a year.
I don't know how much more than the average computer-related jobs in both countries are paid, but let's assume the proportion is the same. (I.e., that if a job was paid $70,000 a year in Australia, the equivalent job would be paid $2000 in China.)
I.e., here's the kick: for the same money, China can hire 35 times more people than Australia. Or conversely, doing the same custom software project in China will cost 35 times less than in Australia.
Let's say your custom government database program needs X programmers, Y managers, Z DBAs, and assorted other personel. The thing is, assuming equally educated people are available to both, then the same number of people will be needed in Australia or in China. But in China those will cost 35 times less. If the whole project costs 35 million dollars in Australia, it will cost only 1 million in China.
I.e., what I'm getting at is that even while China "only" spends 1.3 billion compared to Australias 4 billion, China may well be able to get _more_ stuff for its money than Australia does.
Sometimes comparing everything in pure dollars, or worse yet in dollars-per-capita, can miss the whole point. The point isn't to be at the top of some Top 10 Spenders list, the point is to get some job done. No more, no less. If China can get the same job done cheaper, anything else is plain old irrelevant.
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