June 4 — Technologies that enable new service models for digital government must be at the top of the list for government organizations as they prioritize technology investments, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gartner has identified the 10 most important technology trends for government in 2015 in order to help CIOs and IT leaders assess critical strategic technologies and plan their enterprises’ or agencies’ IT roadmaps.

Spending by national, federal and local governments worldwide on technology products and services is forecast to decline 1.8 percent from $439 billion to $431 billion in 2015, growing to $475.5 billion by 2019.

Gartner research director Rick Howard said organizational culture, legacy IT systems and business processes, stretched IT budgets, and the lack of critical IT skills are among the inhibitors for government CIOs when evaluating and selecting new technology or sourcing options.

“Public sector CIOs can gain support for digital innovation from public officials and administrators by explaining digital innovation in terms of business priorities and presenting relevant examples of what the consumer service industry or other digitally savvy government agencies have done, how they have done it, and what the results have been,” said Mr. Howard.

“These strategic technology trends have substantial disruptive potential that is just beginning to materialize and will reach an inflection point within the next three to five years,” said Mr. Howard. “Public sector CIOs can capitalize on the value of these trends by first determining how they will impact government program operations or service delivery models, and then by building the organizational capabilities and capacity needed to support them.”

1)    Digital Workplace

The government workforce of the future will be populated with digitally literate employees, from frontline workers to top-level executives. The digital workplace is open, flat and democratic. It is the organizational manifestation of open government. CIOs and IT leaders must take a leadership role in building a more social, mobile, accessible and information-driven work environment.

2)    Multichannel Citizen Engagement

Government jurisdictions with multiple channels (municipal offices, physical mail correspondence, contact centers, e-government websites and mobile apps) are struggling to provide their citizens with one coherent view of the enterprise. A multichannel strategy, in the context of digital government, means more than delivering a seamless experience to stakeholders. It also is about delivering interactions that are connected, consistent, convenient, collaborative, customized, clear and transparent. To produce those outcomes, policymakers and CIOs must radically redesign service models by combining traditional marketing tools (such as focus groups, user experience labs, surveys and stakeholder analysis) with new approaches (such as citizen co-creation initiatives, agile development and design thinking).

3)    Open Any Data

The number and variety of public-facing open datasets and Web APIs published by all tiers of governments worldwide continue to increase. Gartner’s view is that government open data is here to stay, but it will take a decade or more before its maximum utility is realized.

The rapid growth of open datasets among early mover organizations and flat or declining budgets create sustainability challenges to government open data programs. Open data is not free. For most government agencies, open data programs are an unfunded or underfunded cost center. The “value” of open data must become tangible to government in terms of how its availability can quantifiably contribute to operational efficiency or effectiveness, let alone how it supports economic development, national productivity or commercial ventures. Gartner predicts that by 2018, more than 30 percent of digital government projects will treat any data as open data.

4)    Citizen e-ID

Citizen electronic identification (e-ID) refers to an orchestrated set of processes and technologies managed by governments to provide a trusted domain for how public services will be accessed by citizens on any device or through any online channel (Web, mobile devices or applications) — and, in some cases, using smart card readers attached to PCs or kiosks. It has been a long-standing yet elusive goal of many government planners to provide citizens with integrated and seamless access to all government services.

To be successful, citizen e-ID programs require a trusted relationship between government and commercial vendors, with a focus on business value, interoperability and user experience. Regardless of whether a government agency serves as the primary citizen e-ID identity broker or contracts with a commercial identity and access management as a service (IDaaS) provider, CIOs must ensure that personal privacy and data confidentiality requirements are met.

5)    Edge Analytics

Analytics is rapidly evolving from a separate and distinct business function into a fluid aspect of system operations and user experiences. The capabilities of edge analytics are particularly relevant as government CIOs and agency program leaders design new mobile services that are augmented by situational context and real-time interactions.

Edge analytics possess three distinct characteristics. Primarily, they are advanced — they apply predictive and prescriptive algorithms and cognitive computing to make real-time assessments about what will happen or what should happen. Second, edge analytics are pervasive. They are embedded into business processes and applications to deliver responsive and agile organizational performance. Finally, edge analytics are invisible. They operate continuously in the background, tracking user activity, processing sensor and environmental data, dynamically adjusting workflows to enhance the user experience, or managing activities during events as they unfold.

6)    Scalable Interoperability

Government agencies are starting to increasingly rely on data exchange with external partners in order to optimize their service delivery networks and business functions, such as cross-boundary collaboration and service coordination, monitoring and outcome reporting.

Scalable interoperability offers government CIOs, enterprise architects and business process analysts an incremental, “just enough” approach to architecture and standards to deliver “soon enough” value. By narrowing the scope of interoperability initiatives, a motivated community of interest — that is, stakeholders who receive tangible benefits from improved data exchange — can agree to use application-neutral and source-neutral extensible identifiers, formats and protocols to achieve mutual goals.

7)    Digital Government Platforms

In digital business, citizens should no longer have to navigate among various agencies and programs through vertical, first generation e-government Web portals in order to locate the services they seek. A digital government platform incorporates service-oriented architecture (SOA) design patterns for the provision and use of enterprise services across multiple domains, systems and processes.

Vendor offerings are still at an early stage, and they focus primarily on supporting smart cities; examples include IBM Smarter Cities, Microsoft CityNext, Cisco Smart+Connected Communities, SAP Urban Matters, Oracle’s Solutions for Smart Cities and Capgemini’s Global Cities. Despite their focus on operational technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT), these platforms address many of the issues pertaining to the data exchange and event triggering that are typical of digital government.

8)    Internet of Things

The IoT is the network of physical objects (fixed or mobile) that contains embedded technology to communicate, monitor, sense or interact with multiple environments. For government, the IoT enables the digital transformation of service strategies. Government agencies can expect IoT-driven changes in several different areas, including environmental or public infrastructure monitoring, emergency response, supply chain inspection, asset and fleet management, and traffic safety.

Government CIOs will need to approach the IoT strategically to evaluate how a growing base of intelligent objects and equipment can be combined with traditional Internet and IT systems to support breakthrough innovations in operational performance or public service delivery.

9)    Web-Scale IT

Web-scale IT is a system-oriented architectural pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT organization. Web-scale IT enables the rapid and scalable development and delivery of Web-based IT services that leverage agile, lean and continuous delivery principles.

For government, the shift to Web-scale IT is a long-term trend with significant IT process, cultural and technology implications. Organizations adopting a Web-scale IT philosophy will largely eschew the acquisition of expensive, scalable computing, storage and networking resources in favor of lower-cost, open-source-derived hardware that bypasses the traditional infrastructure “middlemen.” Consequently, traditional IT suppliers and delivery modes will become less relevant to government IT.

10)  Hybrid Cloud (and IT)

Hybrid IT offers government CIOs a new operating model that supports their IT departments’ ability to combine and manage on-premises infrastructure or internal private cloud with external cloud-based environments (community, public or hybrid) simultaneously. Hybrid IT is how IT departments are organized to secure, deliver, manage and govern these environments.

In government, where consolidation is high on many agendas, a hybrid IT model requires very different competencies to support various public cloud deployments. Government CIOs will need to reposition IT organizations from being full-service providers of IT services to being their agencies’ preferred brokers and managers of services offered predominantly through the cloud.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. is the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. The company delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to clients in approximately 10,000 distinct enterprises worldwide. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and has 6,800 associates, including more than 1,500 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 90 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

—

Source: Gartner