Departments silent on their IT security spend
HOW much is spent on IT security in Government departments is information those departments refused to disclose to the Irish Mail on Sunday this week.
The departments said that for ‘operational and security reasons’ they are advised by the National Cyber Security Centre ‘not to disclose information which could in any way compromise the security of ICT systems’.
However, budget estimates for each department for 2021 indicate a serious underspend in IT across the board. According to UCC Professor in Business Information Systems Dr Simon Woodworth the industry norm for a government department would be a 5% spend of its overall budget on IT infrastructure, with 2% being the bare minimum.
Just two departments contacted by the MoS disclosed their IT budget for 2021. The Department of Defence said its overall budget for this year was €1.073bn, of which €17.11m was set aside for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which represented just 0.6% of its overall budget. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar’s Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has a €1.15bn budget for 2021, of which €8.2m (0.7%) has been allocated for ICT.
Other departments contacted by the MoS declined to state exactly what they dedicated to ICT in their 2021 budgets.
However, revised estimate volumes for this year show almost all departments are underspending on ICT.
Bucking the trend, the Department of Foreign Affairs met and exceeded the industry norm of 5% with a €26.2m spend on ICT, representing 11% of its overall €236m budget.
The Department of Health, which also fell prey to a cyberattack this week along with the HSE, dedicated €2.5m to ‘office supplies and external IT services’ in 2021 out of its €22bn budget. However, under its capital services budget there is a €1.2bn (5.4%) estimate which includes ICT support for health agencies and facilities.
The Department of the Taoiseach met the 2% bare minimum spend on ICT (2.1%). However, 10 Government departments did not, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Social Protection and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.