After nearly a decade of “doing more with less,” government CIOs remain under pressure to further optimize IT and business costs while leading digital innovation in the public sector, according to Gartner.
Rick Howard, Research VP at Gartner, said “Legacy silos of systems, data and processes reinforce ‘business as usual’ practices and behaviors that limit government participation in broader partner ecosystems capable of supporting fully digital end-to-end citizen services. In the digital service economy, government must make strategic investments in IT or risk perpetuating suboptimal business and service models that are financially unsustainable in the long term.”
To enable government transformation initiatives, Gartner has identified the top 10 strategic technologies in 2016 and provides recommendations to CIOs and IT leaders regarding adoption and benefits. It is not a list of what government CIOs spend the most time or money on, rather it is a list of strategic technologies that Gartner recommends they should have a plan for in 2016. The top ten strategic categories include- Digital Workplace; Multichannel Citizen Engagement; Open Any Data; Citizen e-ID; Analytics Everywhere; Smart Machines; Internet of Things; Digital Government Platforms; Software-Defined Architecture; Risk-Based Security
Four new trends emerged in 2016 with the potential to significantly benefit government performance within the next three to five years. Analytics everywhere, smart machines, software-defined architecture and risk-based security will each challenge governance, human resources management, sourcing and financing practices.