Government Finance Leadership

Expert insight to help government finance leaders drive and sustain organizational impact

CFO Leadership in the Public Sector

In recent years, the CFO has become increasingly important to government agencies and other public sector entities as a champion of rigorous financial management and a safeguard against fraud.

While government CFOs face unique regulatory requirements, their mandate is much like that of their private sector peers: Lead their organization to manage financial resources to effectively drive the organization’s mission. Uncover three best practices government finance leaders can leverage to successfully lead their organization.

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Discover the key areas government CFOs must prioritize

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    73% of finance functions favor a centralized, tightly governed source for data.

    Government finance leadership is mission critical

    In today’s dynamic environment, an effective financial management strategy is critical to achieving government finance priorities. Government finance leaders know that data assets are essential to strong decision making, and the majority value greater visibility and greater collaboration on data. But few use centralized, tightly governed analytic techniques for government finance: Most simply report financial data, and when they do apply analysis, it’s in support of routine, calendar-driven processes.

    How we address your top challenges

    Government finance leaders struggle with delivering high-quality data analytics for many reasons, including an excessive amount of data, an insufficient amount of time and a lack of processes, tools and skills. Our expert advice and unrivaled insights into the best practices of government finance leaders equip you to overcome these worsening challenges and drive organizational impact through government finance leadership.

    Lead the government finance workforce

    Government CFOs struggle to achieve mission-critical priorities and maximize the ROI of technology investments due to their teams’ ineffective use of digital technologies. Assess, develop and increase your teams’ proficiency in these five most relevant digital competencies for finance teams.

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    Execute government finance transformation

    85% of finance teams are undergoing or planning a finance transformation. But 70% of finance transformation initiatives fail to deliver anticipated benefits. Avoid common pitfalls and capitalize on best practices to transform government finance successfully.

    Explore the Roadmap

    Adapt to Embrace Digitalization

    As digitalization brings opportunities for process improvements, government agencies must adopt new roles and responsibilities. Uncover how to be an effective steward of improvement in the digital era by hiring for new roles, measuing continuous improvement and developing general analytical ability.

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    Overcome Digital Conservatism in Government Finance

    Government CFOs overwhelmingly agree that their organizations must use digital technology to become more productive and effective, but their teams remain reluctant to embrace the technology. Look at the steps you must take to reset your team’s expectations and get your organization to embrace and exploit digital technology.

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    New to your role?

    As government finance becomes more complex, it’s critical for new government finance leaders to assume a range of early responsibilities effectively. Using insight from new and tenured CFOs, we’ve identified the key drivers of successful CFO role transitions, and we can equip you with the tools to make a fast, successful impact.

    Guide

    Onboard to government finance role

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    Article

    Establish government finance plan

    See Key Activities

    Research

    Accelerate government finance impact

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    We received around $100,000 worth of value from Gartner research and calls with subject matter experts about our budget challenges, functional reorganization and shared services initiative. Quite frankly, we would have been flying blind without Gartner.
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    Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference

    Join the most important gathering for CFOs to explore potential finance tech providers and get actionable insights for how you can prioritize technology investments.

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    FAQ for Transitioning to Digital Government

    Digital government is government designed and operated to take advantage of digital data in optimizing, transforming and creating government services. Collaboration among the government stakeholders operating within the digital ecosystem is key to the success of digital government. These stakeholders: develop and refine digital government strategies based on reporting and assessment; acquire and develop the workforce skills and leadership competencies for digital government; and procure technologies to digitalize government processes, services and transactions.

    Digital government is facing an uncertain future: Digital maturity in governments remains low and government leaders must tackle multiple, concurrent forces, including political, social and technological, which are rapidly changing societies served. Gartner’s digital government research agenda focuses on supporting strategic leadership of technology-enabled changes that advance government organizations’ missions. We guide the government finance leader’s digital government transition – e.g., educate on digital government, document digital government strategy, determine governance structure for digital government, identify digital government analytics and reports. Additionally, Gartner helps government finance leaders enable digital government, via smart resource allocation practices, and continuously improve digital government, through financial and public value measures.

    Federal government finance leaders recognize the value of digital government transformation and understand that agencies must be agile and innovative to succeed, but struggle to be responsive to changes in how federal government services are offered and consumed. Data is at the heart of the federal government digital transformation, a long-term endeavor: The federal government needs a digital change agent to harness the power of data and drive efficiency.

    The transition to digital government requires careful planning and a focus on outcomes from federal government finance leaders. To be successful, federal government finance leaders need to tackle both strategic and tactical challenges with a relentless focus on using and sharing data to make federal government services more proactive and federal government operations more efficient. Gartner provides leadership support for federal government finance to improve organizational efficiency and drive digital government transformation at the federal level. Our data-driven expertise enables federal government finance leaders to manage talent, make critical decisions, displace costs, and mitigate risks to agency and department missions.

    State & local government finance leaders recognize the value of digital government transformation and understand that state & local government must be agile and innovative to succeed, but struggles to be responsive to changes in how state & local government services are offered and consumed. Data is at the heart of the state & local government digital transformation, a long-term endeavor: State & local government needs a digital change agent to harness the power of data and drive efficiency.

    The transition to digital government requires careful planning and a focus on outcomes from state & local government finance leaders. To be successful, state & local government finance leaders need to tackle both strategic and tactical challenges with a relentless focus on using and sharing data to make state & local government services more proactive and state & local government operations more efficient. Gartner provides leadership support for state & local government finance to improve organizational efficiency and drive digital government transformation at the state & local level. Our data-driven expertise enables state & local government finance leaders to manage talent, make critical decisions, displace costs, and mitigate risks.

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