Now 10 days past, we still bask in the glow of the golden performances by Canadian Winter Olympians in Vancouver. Even more importantly, as Canadians, we continue to thump our chests about stepping up on the world stage and demonstrating that we are proud of our country and our accomplishments. All very good things and certainly about time.
But the Olympic performance begs the question for those in the IT industry about whether this new-found Canadian pride and confidence will translate to a turnaround for the generally laggard Canadian IT industry. The OECD has consistently commented on Canada’s low level of spending on innovation – even to the point of identifying Canada as a “third world nation” a few years back.
As recently as this past fall, Gartner put out their forecast for IT spending in 2010 and while almost all other geographies on earth were expected to see IT spending rebound to 2008 levels after a dip in 2009 for the global financial crisis, Canada’s spending was still expected to lag well behind 2008. The same study forecasted that Canadian spending on IT would be about 7.8% of US spending for 2010 – which is certainly less than the 10% of population benchmark that we typically use to compare ourselves to our less golden southern neighbours. By these measures it would appear that our under-investment is going to continue.
Finally, we had a new federal budget last week. While much of the focus was on reigning in government spending to reduce future deficits, it was alarming how little time was given (almost none) to the topics of innovation and productivity. Many analysts commented on the lack of specific focus on these areas. Our federal government has not yet stepped up with any kind of obvious plan to encourage spending on technology and innovation.
But using our new found national pride and extrapolating our world-beating performances, perhaps this is the time that Canadian businesses will step up and start over-investing in technology in order to better compete on the world stage. Those of us who spend our working lives advising and assisting businesses in the adoption of technology certainly hope this is the case.