Government purchasing policy will dictate the fortunes of the IT sector, according to Bernard Brown, partner and head of business services at KPMG and former head of consulting at IT services firm Atos Origin.

This week, a survey from Totaljobs showed that the number of jobseekers in the IT sector increased by 100% in the past year. Microsoft also predicted this year that the sector would create more than 78,000 jobs over the next four years.

But Brown told Recruiter that the fortunes of these jobseekers and the creation of these new jobs depend heavily on whether the political parties follow a long-term repayment of debt or short term, which will have a big impact on the IT job market.

“If they go for long-term payment, it will be less significant. If we go for short-term measures, which will be very painful for the public sector, you are very likely to see large scale job losses in the public sector. The public sector is a big buyer of IT which will have a huge impact.

“A number of IT companies supply into government on large outsourcing projects. So for instance, will the government invest in IT? What are the issues around data security and access management.?

“At the same time, you have the government trying to save money and IT is one of those areas of expenditure that is very likely to be impacted. It will depend on whether we have got innovative new services in IT to create new UK-based IT jobs.”