According to the Center for Digital Government,* which surveyed counties across the U.S. this year as part of the Digital Counties project, the average participating county said it spent 46 percent of its technology budget on internal staff.
That far outpaces states, which on average spent one-third of their budgets on staff.
Counties also spent more on telecommunications and hardware than states. Together, those three categories made up 75 percent of county budgets, versus only 53 percent for states.
Conversely, states devote more of their budgets to software and IT services (38 percent altogether) than counties (24 percent).
Much like with the states project, the numbers represent a unique look into public IT budgets. Because governments use different terminology and have different organizational structures, it can be difficult to compare IT spending between them using budgets.
CDG doesn’t publish exact numbers for how many counties participated in the survey.
For more statistics from Digital Counties, click here. For winners, click here.
*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, Government Technology's parent company.
Editor's note: This story was corrected to clarify that the number of participants in the survey is unreleased information.
