There’s no doubt that technology is constantly evolving, and government CIOs must stay on top of these changes to meet the needs of their stakeholders and deliver on their mission, strategy and operational goals. Whether it’s adopting new technologies to improve services or preparing for the future of digital governance, here are 10 key trends by Gartner all government CIOs should be aware of.
Composability
- Gartner predicts that by 2024, over 25% of government RFPs (Request for Proposal) for mission-critical IT systems will require solutions architecture and variable licensing that support composable design approach. 8 of the top 10 application vendors will have structured their application suite products as collections of composable business capabilities by 2025.
- Composability enables governments to focus on the citizens, instead of focusing on specific programs. For digital transformation and innovation, CIOs need to work with organizational and ecosystem leaders to develop a vision for the future of service delivery.
- They must work with department leaders to perform a gap analysis of current-state and future-state capabilities and advance a roadmap for a composable business architecture. Then create a modular and easy-to-integrate composable technology architecture based on the future-state capability model by collaborating with technology and product leaders for developing a roadmap for the digital government technology platform.
Adaptive security
- Adaptive security is fundamental to creating trust and building resiliency. In an adaptive security model, cybersecurity systems work together to prevent, detect and respond to threats. Unlike in traditional security models, there is no clear boundary between safe and unsafe areas. This is necessary because more and more people are using cloud services and Ubiquitous-X.
- CIOs must evaluate their cybersecurity capabilities and embrace adaptive security due to the increasing threat, rapid advances in tools and updated compliance frameworks.
Citizen digital identity
- According to Gartner, one third of all national governments and half of U.S. states will offer citizens mobile-based identity wallets by 2024. However, only a minority of these wallets will be interoperable between different sectors and jurisdictions. This means that it is important for governments to make digital identity work well on a large scale.
- Digital identity is important for more advanced digital governments. But traditional systems that separate people into different categories like ‘citizen,’ ‘consumer,’ ‘patient,’ and ‘student’ are starting to disappear. There is an accelerating public- and private-sector interest in more decentralized digital identity approaches.
Total experience
- Total Experience (TX) is a design approach that creates great experiences for citizens, constituents and employees of government agencies.
- TX interlinks Citizen/constituent experience (CX), Employee experience (EX), User experience (UX), and Multiexperience (MX) and creates a shared superior experience that focuses on and emphasizes the human experience with the technologies supporting them.
- A TX strategy also interlinks digital and nondigital techniques from CX, EX, UX and MX for increasing citizen and employee confidence in, and satisfaction with, government services. Therefore, CIOs must focus on delivering TX to enable citizens to access government services via multiple channels, helping enhance inclusion, equity and the overall experience.
Anything as a service
- Many government organizations are using the anything as a service (XaaS) model to improve their legacy infrastructure and create new services. The CIOs in these organizations need to change how they govern IT, buy services and attract talent in order to make this work.
- Many different types of XaaS delivery models exist, and each one requires different internal IT skills. Hence, the organization does not need to develop or acquire certain hard to find and expensive skills.
- This shift away from internal IT skills also gives CIOs the opportunity to rethink their workforce plans and create paths for upskilling staff wherever feasible.
Modernize legacy IT
- Government agencies that fail to upgrade their legacy applications could fall behind in their capacity to provide quality services to citizens and deliver mission value. Legacy modernization replaces outdated architecture, hardware and software applications critical with current operations with modern equivalents.
- Legacy modernization allows organizations to automate their manual processes so they can move on to using more automation. This makes it possible to create a software-defined infrastructure and use the cloud to deliver automated citizen services that are more agile and resilient.
- To support the organization’s mission and strategy, government CIOs need to assess the business capabilities that are required. They also need to figure out what technologies are needed in order to deliver those capabilities.
- By optimizing the information and technology (I&T) operating model and putting in place effective governance mechanisms, CIOs can maintain momentum and business support for modernization initiatives.
Hyperautomation
- Governments have been modernizing their systems in order to improve services. They are doing this by automating tasks and redesigning processes.
- Hyperautomation is a way to quickly identify and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. This involves using multiple technologies like AI, robotic process automation, XaaS, low-code/no-code, and packaged software.
- The vulnerabilities arising due to increased deployment of digital solutions makes it critical for government CIOs to fix business processes and technical gaps like interoperability, collaboration, and data exchange.
Case management as a service
- In order to provide government services that work well together, it is important for CIOs to design and develop case management solutions that can be shared across different programs and levels of government.
- In case management as a service (CMaaS), every process of the case management life cycle is designed as a group of applications called packaged business capabilities (PBCs). CMaaS can build institutional agility in government by applying composable business principles and practices to replace legacy case management systems with modular case management products.
Decision intelligence
- As per Gartner, by 2023 over 33% of large organizations will have analysts practicing decision intelligence. By 2024, 60% of government AI and data analytics investments will start directly impacting real-time operational decisions and outcomes.
- Making good decisions that improve trust and customer experience means understanding the context in which they will be made. This means that the decision process must be clear, and the focus should be on outcomes rather than just sticking to a process.
- Decision intelligence systematically uses data-driven technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics at each stage of government activity. This will help government CIOs in making strategic decisions, managerial decisions, and operational decisions.
Data sharing
- By 2023, Gartner estimates that 50% of government organizations will establish formal accountability structures for data sharing which includes standards for data structure, quality and timeliness. All organizations that implement data sharing will outperform their peers on most business value metrics.
- When different data sources are brought together, it allows for a cross-analysis of the data. This creates more value across government as a whole.
- In order to share data successfully, CIOs must work with stakeholders to develop a data-sharing strategy. This strategy should focus on creating value and achieving government goals.
Source: Gartner
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