IT spending soars in financial sector

Finance companies are ramping up their expenditure on IT, while computing expenditure is draining away from the public sector.

According to statistics released on Friday by the National Computing Centre (NCC), financial sector growth is being driven by new expenditure in voice over IP (VoIP) services and in online security.

The finance sector is the UK's top industry sector for IT spending, as it buys the most products and services and also employs the most IT staff. The average finance company is spending £9,864 for every employee on IT, with one IT staffer employed for every 13 end users.

But in contrast, local government and the health sector are shirking away from spending on their IT. A typical local authority spends £2,189 per user, while the health sector manages just £1,713. The NCC believes the public sector is exploiting its heavy IT expenditure from previous years.

IT departments in the health sector have to support an average of 60 end users per IT professional.

The news comes as the NHS revealed it has missed a key milestone in its massive Connecting for Health programme. Twenty-two hospital trusts were supposed to launch new systems by the end of October, but the NHS admitted last week that just four have done so.

IT bosses in central government predicted they will spend an average of 2.6 percent less over the coming year.

The NCC estimates that IT spending across the UK will increase by nearly 2 percent.