This year's public informatization projects are expected to grow by more than 260 billion won from a year earlier, centered on artificial intelligence (AI), cloud (SaaS), and information security.
The government has been aggressively pushing AI adoption in the public sector recently, and the increase is seen as a reaction to last year's series of major hacking incidents.
The Ministry of Science and ICT on the 31st announced the final results of its survey, 2026 public sector software (SW)·ICT equipment·information security demand forecast, conducted on about 2,200 institutions.
According to the survey, total project spending on public sector SW and ICT equipment this year is 6.4737 trillion won, up 4.2% (260.2 billion won) from a year earlier, and the total number of projects rose 5.6% to 16,274.
By project type, SW development accounted for 4.9681 trillion won, or 76.7% of the total, followed by ICT equipment at 1.0776 trillion won (16.7%) and purchases of commercial SW and software as a service (SaaS) at 428 billion won (6.6%).
In particular, AI-related SW development surged 37.0% from 284.9 billion won last year to 390.3 billion won this year, indicating an accelerated shift to new technologies. Overall SW development increased 3.8% from a year earlier.
Demand for purchases of commercial SW and SaaS increased 16.3% year over year, with commercial SW accounting for 387.4 billion won, or 90.5%. SaaS purchase demand was set at 40.6 billion won.
ICT equipment projects came to 1.0776 trillion won, up 1.6% from the previous year on higher demand for network equipment purchases. Computing equipment (73.5%), network equipment (23.2%), and broadcasting equipment (3.3%) accounted for the largest shares, in that order.
Projects that include information security totaled 973.3 billion won, a sharp increase of 22.5% from a year earlier, which was attributed to the need to prevent breaches and strengthen security levels.
By field, demand increased across the information protection sector for information security products (18.5%), information security services (19.0%), physical security products (79.4%), and physical security services (46.4%).
Lee Do-gyu, director general for information and communications policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "Demand for informatization in the public sector is rapidly increasing around new technologies such as AI and the cloud."
He added, "Based on these results, we will present efficient investment directions and strengthen the policy foundation so that the private SW and information security industries can grow together."