Over half of the UK’s government ICT budget is spent on "running the business" instead of "changing it", still, the UK is ahead of countries like Germany, France or Spain.

According to the research from Kable, the UK government is this year investing 55.8% of its ICT budget on running existing systems and applications, and 54.2% next year.

In contrast, Germany is this year spending 56.9% of its total ICT budget in running the business, while France (57.9%) and Spain (59.1%) plan to spend even more.

Over the next 12 months, Spain will increase expenditure with existing solutions to 60.6% and Germany to 57.7%. France will reduce it to 55.8%.

As for investing in new IT projects this year and the next, the UK is planning the biggest amount out of the four countries: 44.2% and 45.8% respectively.

Germany will allocate 43.1% and 42.3% of its budget respectively, followed by France (42.1%/44.2%) and Spain (40.9%/39.4%).

Looking at specific IT systems in use in the UK, the study has also unveiled that storage management and service management solutions (both at 75%), are the most used IT systems management products by the government.

Database management (66.7%), and patch management and configuration (66.7%) solutions follow.

Systems and network management as well as virtualisation management solutions are both used by 58.3%, while transaction performance management and user experience management solutions are used by 50% of respondents.

Over the next two years, the national government will increase expenditure in service management solutions, with 66.7% of respondents considering investment.

58.3% of those surveyed said they are considering investing in database management solutions in the next 24 months.

The biggest drop in interest goes to storage management that will be considered by only 50% of respondents, down for today’s 75%.

Further research has found that web and video conferencing solutions will gain momentum, with 75% of those surveyed in the UK government saying that they will prioritise this area for investment (compared to today’s 66.7%).

All figures come from Kable’s ICT Customer Insight survey, which polled respondents from across the UK government in Q4 2014. The survey findings include data on ICT budgets, communications and collaboration solutions, and IT systems management solutions currently in use. Subscribe to Kable here.