Top 10 government tech trends in 2022: Gartner

Public sector leaders are accelerating their digital transformation agendas, and working to scale their digital innovation.

New research from Gartner reveals the top 10 government technology trends that are assisting the public sector to capture the opportunities and mitigate the risks of disruption.

According to Dean Lacheca, Gartner senior director analyst, “The Australian government is making some investments on both the external facing and internally focused aspects of digital government, but a more systematic approach is needed.”

Composable government enterprise

Governments are focusing on citizen-centric services to generate composable business architecture, technology and thinking.

According to the authors, “Existing siloed approaches to managing services, systems and data limit governments’ ability to adapt. Sustainable and stable government requires a more adaptive and flexible foundation.”

Adaptive security

As cyber security threats increase in quantity and sophistication, governments are shifting from compliance-based to risk based approaches. This breaks down traditional concepts the safe and the unsafe, and allows governments to create a cyber security system that operates like an “automonic biological immune system”.

“The cybersecurity techniques are only as good as the weakest link, and that weakest link is often the human element. This requires improved awareness programs, embedding cybersecurity practices throughout IT organisations and cybersecurity talent acquisition,” the authors wrote.

Digital identity ecosystems

As the scope of digital identity expands, Gartner predicts that by 2023 varied digital identity providers will support at least 80 percent of government services that require authentication.

According to the report, “Future identity use cases must be cross-sector and cross-jurisdiction to be relevant. This requires breaking out of past identity silos where organizations and sectors used to build their own schemes. Government should use its privileged position to act as facilitator, federator or regulator of the emerging ecosystems.”

Total experience (TX)

TX strategies are gaining momentum, as government leaders priorities the improvement of services delivery.

Gartner defines TX as, “an approach that combines the disciplines of user experience (UX), citizen/constituent experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and multiexperience (MX) for a more holistic service design and delivery.”

TX strategies can reduce service friction, delay, and poor service experiences.

Anything as a Service (XaaS)

XaaS combines software, platform, infrastructure, business process and unified commerce as a service delivery models. Governments are scaling XaaS offerings with Gartner predicting that by 2025, 95 percent of government agency IT investments will be made in XaaS offerings.

Accelerated legacy modernisation

Governments are rapidly updating their legacy applications, replacing the hardware and software with up to date equivalents.

More than 75 percent of governments are expected to move more than half their workloads to hyperscale cloud service providers by 2025 as part of their legacy modernisation plan.

“Organisations must maintain full commitment to accelerated legacy modernisation, beginning with senior leadership. This requires planning for activities to align with core business objectives and goals.”

Case Management as a Service (CMaaS)

The CMaaS model is transforming case work, to improve cross-government services integration and build institutional agility in government.

According to the report, “The integration of government services depends on designing and developing case management solutions as composable products and services that can be shared across the programs, verticals and levels of government.”

Hyperautomation

Governments are rapidly investing in hyperautomation initiatives, with 75 percent of governments expected to have at least three enterprise-wide hyperautomation programs underway by 2024. Technologies including AI and robotic process automation (RPA) are being leveraged to improve interoperability and collaboration as well as allow governments to offer connected public services.

“Government organizations will be able to use hyperautomation to balance digital investments for resiliency and flexibility, while optimizing costs.”

Decision intelligence

Governments are investing in talent to practice decision intelligence and decision modelling, using AI and advanced analytics. This is expected to improve service deliver, improve data accuracy, reduce the cost of late intervention and reduce unintended consequences.

“Engineering decisions for precision, transparency, traceability, flexibility, reusability and explainability will significantly empower and improve governance.”

Data Sharing as a Program

Sharing data beyond organisational boundaries has allowed policy makers to address the Covid disruption in a timely manner.

“Data sharing in government overall is often ad hoc, driven by high-profile incidents. By contrast, data sharing as a program is a systematic and scalable approach to enable data reuse and services innovation.”

Gartner predicts that by next year organisations spanning all industries, including government, that promote data sharing will outperform competitors across the majority of business value metrics.