Public sector CIOs feel the ‘squeeze’ when driving transformational change: Gartner

Gartner research VP, Rick Howard: "Government must make strategic investments in IT or risk perpetuating financially unstable, suboptimal business and service models."

Government CIOs remain under increased pressure to further optimise IT and business costs while leading digital innovation in the public sector, according to global findings by Gartner.

Public sector CIOs face organisational and cultural challenges that are barriers to harnessing the potential of social, mobile, data analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive transformational change, Gartner said.

Gartner research vice-president, Rick Howard, said legacy silos of systems, data and processes reinforce “business as usual” practices and behaviours 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,” said Howard.

“Government CIOs who are too slow to adopt the technology innovations that are transforming private sector service industries will increase business risk and cost, while compromising the mission of their organisations.”

Global spending was also put under the microscope with Gartner forecasting the worldwide spend by national, federal and local governments on technology products and services to grow slightly by 0.3 per cent to $430.1 billion in 2016, growing to $476.1 billion by 2020. Howard said this is a turnaround after a 5.2 per cent decrease in 2015.

Meanwhile, in Australia, the government sector (federal, state and local) is forecast to spend A$10.8 billion on technology products and services this year, up 2.2 percent from 2015, according to the latest Gartner forecast.

Addressing where government CIOs and IT leaders “should investigate and have a plan for in 2016,” Gartner has identified the top 10 strategic technologies of 2016, according to Howard, who authored the report: “The Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for Government in 2016.”

The list includes: digital workplace; multichannel citizen engagement; open any data; citizen e-ID; analytics everywhere; smart machines; Internet of Things (IoT); digital government platforms; software-defined architecture; and risk-based security.

“Many of these technology trends change business models in ways that need to be reflected in more modern policies, especially those related to privacy or regulation,” said Howard. “CIOs will need to be front and center in providing advice to policy making bodies and working with industry experts who can consult on options and impacts.”