Written question WQ83211

The table below shows the year-by-year spend on IT across all Welsh Government departments. This covers expenditure on both corporate IT systems as well as external facing services provided by Welsh Government to citizens or organisations.

FY 2016/17

FY 2017/18

FY 2018/19

FY 2019/2020

FY 2020/21

Revenue

£52,995,721

£51,165,403

£51,935,822

£42,457,868

£51,382,991

Capital

£10,801,011

£12,089,345

£12,792,342

£7,352,974

£15,363,531

Total IT Spend

£63,796,732

£63,254,748

£64,728,164

£49,810,843

£66,746,522

Notes:

• ‘Total IT Spend’ represents all spend recorded against IT category codes within the Welsh Government (WG) Finance System.

• At a high level, revenue spend covers IT maintenance agreements, licenses, equipment, software services, support contracts and telecom costs. Capital spend covers the cost of hardware refreshes and 3 year licensing purchases.

• ‘Total IT Spend’ includes the cost of maintaining and fixing IT equipment. Prior to 11th January 2019, this formed part of the services delivered by Atos via the Merlin Services Agreement. After this date, equipment has been maintained and fixed by WG IT staff with support from third party maintenance and support agreements. WG staff costs are not included in the figures provided.

• The overall reduction in spend during FY 19/20 can be attributed, in part, to hardware refresh costs not being deducted during this financial year and cost reductions associated with the expiry of the Merlin contract. Significant increases during FY 20/21 include WG contributions to the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme, WG’s Covid-19 response and project and support costs for Rural Payments Wales (RPW).