Government CIOs: Here’s an Essential Piece of the Digital Transformation Puzzle

In short:

• Governments need to be responsive to the changing needs of the public, partners and elected officials.
• Government CIOs must make the case and drive the adoption of a digital government technology platform to spearhead digital transformation efforts.
• This is done by developing a roadmap for implementing the key components needed to meet organizational goals.

To truly address the changing needs and expectations of their constituents, government agencies must be digital-first, flexible and responsive. Siloed, legacy systems are unable to support needed agility, but also pose greater risk and increased challenges for data sharing and service delivery. CIOs must prioritize digital transformation by transitioning to a digital government technology platform (DGTP).

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“A DGTP provides a means for CIOs to lead their organizations in digital transformation and provide the technical capabilities for product teams to innovate, reduce cost through reuse of common components, and deliver new capabilities with speed and agility,” says Gartner VP Analyst Bill Finnerty.

Download now: The IT Roadmap for Digital Business Transformation

According to Gartner research, by 2023, more than 80% of government digital implementations that do not build on a technology platform will fail to meet objectives.

A DGTP is a set of cross-cutting, integrated, horizontal capabilities that coordinate

government services across multiple domains by integrating five platforms: 

1. Citizen Experience Platform
2. Ecosystem Platform
3. Internet of Things (IoT) Platform
4. Information System Platform
5. Intelligence Platform 

A DGTP allows for true digital transformation, resulting in simplified processes, improved citizen interactions, reduced expenditure and ultimately a more resilient future.

The five primary areas of a DGTP employ reusable components from which government organizations can innovate and derive value. “Focusing on reusable components for each area that meet the organization’s business and technical needs and integrating those components will provide the basis for addressing legacy modernization and new applications,” Finnerty says. 

There is definite (and deliberate) overlap across the five platforms that comprise a DGTP. Here’s a closer look at how each plays a critical role in government:

The Citizen Experience platform provides interfaces and technologies, implements the policies and procedures for citizen and business engagement, and measures the experience of its users.

The Ecosystem platform is a set of digital interfaces that implement policies and procedures for governments and ecosystem partners to exchange data and services.

Enterprise information systems are the heart of government IT’s efforts today. The Information System platform provides the technologies, policies and procedures to integrate these back-office systems into the DGTP.

The Internet of Things (IoT) platform provides the interfaces, data governance and context, as well as implements the policies and procedures for collecting and processing data from IoT sensors.

At the< core of the DGTP is the Intelligence platform. It provides advanced analytics, geospatial and location analytics, robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for processing data collected or stored in any area of the platform. 

The key reusable components in a DGTP are applications and services (as illustrated above). The goal is to provide a frictionless combination of data, services and capabilities that work together under the DGTP and are accessed across networks and devices.

A DGTP is not an off-the-shelf solution. To deliver on the value that a DGTP can bring to government, CIOs must provide clear, visionary leadership in its organization, approach and architecture. But once a DGTP is in place, it provides government agencies the ability to innovate, reduce costs and deliver new capabilities with speed and agility.