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Julie Godin Executive Chair of the Board of Directors |
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François Boulanger President and Chief Executive Officer |
An archipelago of digital complexity
Modern organizations operate within digital environments that resemble a 10,000-piece puzzle. This puzzle is constantly being reassembled while the number of pieces increases and the picture changes as business decisions, regulatory evolution and technological change accumulate over time.
In industrialized countries, the economy relies on an invisible but ubiquitous software infrastructure with hundreds of billions of existing lines of code. Based on usage and investment, we estimate that large private companies use 50–60% of these lines of code, while governments and public corporations use 40–50%.
This digital world, which reflects the differentiators of each country and company, has become an archipelago of IT applications. Differentiation has become the norm, and complexity has become an operating condition.
Over the decades, this complexity has been magnified by the proliferation of business processes, technologies to support them and the need for digital transformation, resulting in an explosion of IT applications and billions of lines of code as a result.
Each line of code is a specific instruction in a programming language that reflects its time, author, company and cultural and geographic differentiators. A fragmented ecosystem has emerged in which each organization, sector and country has developed its own logic, architectures and exceptions. Whether in transport, finance, health, social programs, defence or telecommunications, each of these sectors relies on complex systems that reflect their own requirements, their own temporality and their own risks, decade after decade.
To illustrate this growing complexity, over the years, all administrative government management software has developed architectures and technologies to meet regulatory or differentiating requirements. Each legislative reform or organizational change requires technical adaptations that make systems more fragmented, interconnected and complicated to maintain, as well as 200 million lines of code rather than 100 million previously.
This trend has also gained momentum in all sectors of economic activity, particularly the banking sector, with regulatory intensification that has not been seen since the financial crisis (Basel III, GDPR, PSD2, DORA, AML, KYC, international sanctions, etc.). This regulatory pressure has had a direct impact on information systems. In 2008, a large bank had 150 to 200 million lines of code for its core systems; in 2025, some banks now have over 350 million.
IT professions will continue to grow and develop due to this exponential complexity and the necessary digital transformation
In OECD countries, IT jobs make up around 5% of the labor force, or an estimated 50 million workers. These professions encompass a variety of roles, including systems architecture, cybersecurity, development, data management, infrastructure and governance, each of which contributes to designing, securing, operating and evolving organizations’ digital environments. Increasing functional and regulatory complexity, combined with the need for all organizations to embark on a digital transformation, will create more demand for IT skills.
This change not only requires system adjustments, but also the multiplication of IT-related professions. Organizations will need to increase their cohorts of digital professionals to address issues of compliance, technology integration, cybersecurity, data management and continuous innovation.
Today, 52% of these IT engineers and professionals work in various sectors of the economy (public administration, Crown corporations, health care, manufacturing, finance and insurance, education, etc.), while 48% work at tech companies (IT consulting firms, specialized SMEs, etc.). No matter where they work, the job they do is the same.
This distribution illustrates that when linked to the service sector, the IT ecosystem actively supports all economic sectors.
Regardless of the organization in which they operate, IT engineers and professionals occupy a strategic role. They assist organizations with their digital transformation by offering cutting-edge expertise and tailor-made solutions. Their role is complex and demanding, and they are frequently the catalyst for profound organizational change on both the technological and human level. Their expertise is based on an in-depth understanding of business rules, administrative standards and legislation, which are carefully translated into programming languages.
Each line of code represents a specific instruction related to a business rule, a regulatory constraint or an internal logic. The order of these lines is critical: an error in the sequence will compromise the stability, safety or performance of the system.
To succeed, IT engineers and professionals must combine deep understanding of the industry, technical rigour, strategic vision, strong governance and organizational agility. Complexity is not an obstacle, but a reality to be mastered using a methodical approach, expertise and anticipation.
Equipped with the profound and growing power of modern technologies, these experts assure that organizations are no longer limited in terms of “what” they can build. Instead, these elements and this expertise have become essential to guarantee the quality, cybersecurity, performance and sustainability of our IT ecosystem so that what organizations build can be safely and sustainably operated to drive a business outcome.
The field of IT is therefore based on complementarity between public and private organizations that must adopt digital solutions to improve their operations, efficiency, and the technology service companies that partner with them to design, develop and maintain them.
This cross-sectoral network forms a rich ecosystem, where IT consulting firms, specialized SMEs and public organizations work closely together to address growing digital challenges. Given the talent erosion we are seeing within the IT ecosystem itself, investing in expanding cohorts of digital professionals is now a critical priority to address these challenges.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a productivity tool
In light of this situation, AI is a major driver of productivity. It accelerates data analysis, detects repetitive tasks, generates content, supports the prediction of behaviors and events, enables scenario simulation, facilitates code development, and frees up time for strategic thinking and more informed decision making.
AI stands out for rapid knowledge acquisition. It enables IT professionals to understand business lines more quickly and easily. With its analytical, language processing and contextualization abilities, AI facilitates skill development, interdisciplinary collaboration and adaptation to complex environments.
Like the arrival of personal computers and the Internet, AI is a major innovation. It redefines uses, business models and skills while generating significant productivity gains for individuals, businesses and society as a whole. Its impact is profound and lasting, marking a new phase of global technological change.
The bottom line: Mastering complexity for business outcomes is the next advantage
In summary, functional and regulatory complexity has intensified over time, fuelled by legislative intensification, the increasing sophistication of business processes in recent decades, the rapidly evolving technologies that support them and the urgent need for digital transformation.
It is safe to predict that these trends of recent years will continue to accelerate, making all organizations’ patchwork of IT ecosystems even more complex, especially when new applications need to be integrated and interconnected to facilitate their digital transformation.
Given this dynamic, organizations have no choice but to expand their teams of digital professionals to address these major challenges. The growing power of IT professions is becoming an essential strategic lever.
In this context, AI does not eliminate complexity—if anything, it accelerates the need to manage complexity properly and through a business-first lens.
Productivity gains driven by artificial intelligence enable IT players to focus on high value-added priorities. Over a 5 to 10 year period, this optimization of effort would gradually generate estimated productivity gains of 15% to 20% over that timeframe across IT operations, not simply for one project. Rather than being absorbed as net savings, these gains will be reinvested to improve the whole operations of organizations, including IT services. In the public sector, this will result in more accessible, personalized and effective services for citizens. At large companies, these benefits will enable further innovation, improve the customer experience and strengthen competitiveness.
These gains result from intelligent collaboration between human expertise and algorithmic power. Far from becoming obsolete, it makes the need for highly qualified IT engineers and professionals even more relevant, notably as they focus on high added-value initiatives.
In the end, the challenge facing organizations is not whether the digital puzzle can be simplified, but whether it can be sustainably mastered over time. As the number of pieces continues to grow and the picture continues to evolve, technology—including AI—provides powerful tools to accelerate decision-making and drive productivity and growth. But it is IT engineers and professionals who assemble the pieces, understand their interdependencies and ensure the puzzle holds together.
We see this reality every day, with our global team of nearly 100,000 CGI Partners working in proximity with their clients and focused on building what’s next. Large enterprises increasingly rely on IT experts who can translate and master digital complexity for organizational advantage—working alongside their teams with empathy, trust and accountability. Across industries, resilience, human judgment and human-centered technology are becoming the true differentiators. In this context, AI and other emerging technologies should not remain abstract promises, but practical business levers that help organizations make progress and deliver outcomes that matter.
