Intelligence Briefing
Global tech debt hits 61 billion workdays
While it began as a concept, tech debt evolved in recent years into a measurable problem that companies track. What is new is a global tally of the issue.
With the first-ever release of this data –tapping CAST’s analysis of over 10 billion lines of code – our research finds that global tech debt levels have reached 61 billion days in repair time. Drawn from 17 countries that represent 51% of the world’s GDP, this stark figure is also a conservative one.
LOC Analyzed
10 billion
Applications Examined
47,000
Age of code
1 - 44 years
From the Report
Workdays to repair 1,000 lines of code
2.07
United States
1.99
Italy
1.98
France
1.84
India
1.82
Spain
1.77
Austria
1.72
Netherlands
1.67
Mexico
1.60
UK
1.58
Brazil
1.58
Germany
1.55
Malaysia
1.55
Denmark
1.55
Canada
1.55
Ecuador
1.55
Peru
1.55
Belgium
Leaders to laggards
Measured by the time required to repair code – the most comparable metric across geographies – the most indebted country is the United States, followed by Italy and France.
Notably, emerging economies such as Malaysia, Ecuador, and Peru, have a much lighter tech debt burden. This opens the door for a potential development ‘leapfrog’ opportunity, driven by AI, last seen with deployment of mobile networks in the early 2000s.
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