Global independent research and advisory firm, Government Insights, an IDC company, releases today a report of Western European Government IT spending trends and forecasts in the Western European government sector in the 2006–2011 timeframe. According to this forecast, total IT spending for Western European Government will grow from $43 billion in 2006 to $56 billion in 2011. IT services spending will represent the biggest share of IT spending in government, while packaged software will be the fastest growing with average growth rate above 7%.

\"Information and Communications Technology (ICT) vendors who want to get a share of the spending must provide software solutions for flexible architectures and information sharing, target local and regional governments and defense and public security departments.\" Says Massimiliano Claps, program manager, EMEA Government Insights.

The government sector in Western Europe has undergone a first phase of innovation, with a strong focus of ICT investments to deploy electronic service delivery. The sector is now living a second phase focused on sharing processes and information and tightening IT management practices. According to Government Insights, the short-to-medium term future of ICT investments in the Western European government sector will be driven by the need to:

Increase customer centricity of service delivery, both by facilitating access for citizens across existing channels and by improving the channel mix;
Enhance back office services productivity;
Enable cross-silos collaboration through structured and unstructured information sharing.
In this study Government Insights provides an overview of IT spending trends and forecasts in the Western European government sector. On the qualitative side the report analyzes IT adoption trends in the sector and describes major drivers and inhibitors of IT adoption. On the quantitative side, focus is on spending in hardware, packaged software and IT services for the major European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) in the 2006–2011 timeframe. IT spending is provided for: central government, local government and central government\'s sub-industries. This report also includes recommendations for IT vendors targeting the Western European Government and actions to consider for Governments.