Major trends address critical security challenges, cost containment and citizens' experience in the public sector
As the digital transformation advances with new tools and profound changes in the direction of the global economy, public managers from around the world are directly forced to seek solutions to reduce costs and maximize the performance of their operations. In this scenario, the Gartner, Inc., the world leader in research and advice for companies, announces research with the top ten technology trends for Governments in 2021, with resources that have the potential to accelerate digitization and optimize the supply of public services.
According to Gartner analysts, the top ten strategic technological trends for government use this year arise from the challenges created by the pandemic and the need for flexible operational models that can withstand significant disruptions.
“The COVID-19 pandemic spurred the acceleration of digital innovation across the government sector around the world, presenting leaders in the public sector with new opportunities to use data and technologies to build trust, agility and resilience in public institutions,” says Rick Howard, Vice President of Research at Gartner. "Although the challenges related to the health crisis have been ongoing for some time, it is important to note that we also see the emergence of technological trends that address other critical points, in areas such as security, cost containment and citizen experience."
Gartner's list of strategic technology trends is directly linked to public administration and the political issues that government leaders must address. Government Chiefs Information Officers (CIOs) can use this list to identify technology trends that best meet their post-pandemic recovery priorities and establish the logic, timing and priority of technology investments.
1-Accelerated legacy modernization - Governments have experienced the limitations and risks posed by infrastructure and central systems inherited from decades. To be better prepared to deal with the next outage, public IT executives are accelerating the move to modular, modern architectures. Although the need for modernization of legacy structures is not new for technology leaders in the public environment, the fact is that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated and enhanced the challenges in relation to the transformation of resources, increasing awareness of the risks resulting from the maintenance of obsolete or inappropriate environments. Gartner predicts that by 2025, more than 50% of government agencies will have modernized their IT applications and structures to improve the resilience and agility of their processes.
2-Adaptive Security - An adaptive security approach treats risk, trust and security as a continuous and adaptable process that anticipates and mitigates evolving cyber threats. This approach has components for forecasting, preventing, detecting and responding to threats. This method renounces the traditional notions of perimeter, assuming that there is no limit between safe and unsafe, a necessary conceptual change given the migration to Cloud services. Gartner predicts that 75% of Government sector CIOs will be directly responsible for security outside of IT by 2025, including mission critical technology and operational environments.
3-Anything as a service (XaaS) - XaaS is a Cloud sourcing strategy that covers the acquisition of a full range of business and IT services by subscription. The response to the pandemic and the critical need to deliver digital services have exacerbated the pressures to modernize legacy applications and infrastructure. XaaS offers an alternative to modernize legacy infrastructure, provides scalability and reduces delivery time for digital services. Gartner predicts that 95% of new IT investments made by government agencies will be made as a service solution by 2025.
4-Case management as a service (CMaaS) - Case work is the government's predominant work style, with the entire legacy heavy portfolio of case management point monolithic solutions found in many departments. CMaaS is a new way to build institutional agility by applying combinable business principles and practices to replace legacy case management systems with modular products that can be quickly assembled, disassembled and rebuilt in response to changing business needs. Gartner predicts that by 2024, government organizations with a combinable case management application architecture will implement new features at least 80% faster than those without.
5-Digital Citizen Identity - Digital identity is the ability to prove an individual's identity through any digital channel offered by the government that is available to citizens, which is fundamental for inclusion and access to public services. Digital identity ecosystems are evolving rapidly and prompting governments to assume new roles and responsibilities. The topic is at the top of political agendas, so government CIOs must link digital identity to relevant use cases. Gartner predicts that a true global, portable and decentralized identity standard will appear on the market in 2024 to address business, personal, social and social use cases and invisible identity.
6-Compostable government company - The composite government company is any government organization that adopts combinable design principles. This allows them to expand the reuse of resources and continuously adapt to changes in regulatory, legislative and public expectations. CIOs are adopting a composite government to overcome existing and isolated approaches to managing services, systems and data that limit governments' ability to adapt to the rapidly evolving needs of the emerging digital society. Gartner predicts that 50% of technology companies that provide products and services to public administrations will offer bundled business capabilities to support combinable applications by 2023.
7-Sharing data as a program - Data sharing is generally ad hoc in the government, driven by high-profile use cases, such as child protection incidents or gender-based violence, which cannot be easily generalized. Data sharing as a program turns it into a scalable service, with a number of reusable resources, supporting the search for more combinable approaches in the provision of government services. Gartner predicts that by 2023, 50% of government organizations will establish formal accountability structures for data sharing, including standards for data structure, quality and timeliness.
8- Hyperconnected public services - Hyperconnected public services are the use of various technologies, tools or platforms across the government to automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Government CIOs can use hyperautomatic principles and practices to develop always-connected, highly automated end-to-end business processes and public services that require minimal human intervention. Gartner predicts that by 2024, 75% from governments will have at least three enterprise-wide hyperautomation initiatives launched or underway.
9- Multichannel citizen engagement - Direct citizen participation with governments reached new heights in 2020, as communities dealt with the pandemic, forest fires, hurricanes and other events. Multichannel citizen engagement is bidirectional and continuous engagement with constituents across organizational boundaries, while offering a personalized experience, using preferred and most effective channels to reach them. Gartner predicts that more than 30% of governments will use engagement metrics to track the quantity and quality of citizen participation in political and budgetary decisions by 2024.
10- Operationalized Analysis - Operationalized analysis is the strategic and systematic adoption of data-oriented technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Advanced Analyzes, at each stage of government activity to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of decision-making. Decision-makers can make better operational decisions based on real-time context to improve the quality of citizens' experience. Gartner predicts that by 2024, 60% of investments in Artificial Intelligence and government data analysis are aimed at directly impacting decisions and operational results in real time.
