If the forecasts are fulfilled, by the end of 2022 the Spanish administrations will have invested almost 6,000 million euros in information and communication technologies (ICT). A historical record, which would be 13% higher than in 2021 and 77% higher than the amount of the year before the pandemic that has changed everything. The figure, a reasoned estimate, incorporates 1,196 million contributed by European Next Generation funds.
This projection of 6,000 million is in line with precedents: the first semester usually represents 40% of annual awards, which accelerate as the end of the budget year approaches. Explains the figures Carlos Canitrot, consulting director of ICT Adjudications and its quarterly barometer, which reveals the trends of this chapter that this year could be around 12% of all public investment.
“One of the consequences of the pandemic has been the hiring and purchase, first urgent and then normalized upwards, of the infrastructure that would ensure the continuity of the work of officials, who in March 2020 began to work from their homes. Over time, telecommuting is becoming hybrid work and this will probably be the working trend in the public sector where it is feasible and effective”. Consequently, that infrastructure – hardware, software and communications – has not only been maintained, but will continue to expand.
To this has been added another circumstance. Many digital services that were not well developed have received a flow of investment that, "almost overnight, has triggered their own budget items and has swelled the list of projects that can be financed with European funds."
How is it explained that, in this expansive context, investment in ICT in Catalonia has fallen in the first half of the year by no less than 32% compared to the same period in 2021? It has gone from 285 to 193.5 million euros, a striking setback since it has traditionally been the first community in this ranking.
One reason for the percentage decrease is that in the first half of the year there was a lack of a multi-year contract from the Center for Telecommunications and Information Technologies (CTTI) of those that have led Catalonia to represent up to 25% of the Spanish total in the best years . The loss of first place is circumstantial: Madrid accumulates 225.6 million thanks to a contract for more than 60 million euros awarded to the company NTT Data (former Everis).
As of June 30, the Canitrot team had registered 4,000 successful bidders and more than 1,300 awards. This does not prevent 19% of the total investment from falling on three providers: Telefónica, Indra and NTT, in that order, totaling 439.7 million euros. Behind them come Inetum (previously Informática El Corte Inglés), Oracle and Seidor. The report confirms that the average value of each contract has hardly changed in a year: 272,000 euros.
As expected, services continue to be the most important slice of public investment: 1,277 million, with growth of 33.4% which, according to Canitrot, reflects the gradual and late, but sustained, abandonment by the public sector of its misgivings before the cloud Not massively, but in its SaaS mode (software as a service).
The fact is that the tenders whose object is defined in the specifications as cloud have increased fivefold in the past five years.
