Faced with relentless pressure to reduce costs and improve the performance of government agencies, CIOs must choose between maintaining current operations and transforming government services with fully digitalized business models, according to Gartner.
“There remains an acute need to reduce the overall cost of providing government services while remaining responsive to citizen expectations,” said Rick Howard, research director at Gartner. “CIOs will need to make the case to invest in digital capabilities by recapitalizing stressed IT budgets and optimizing technology portfolios to provide more stable operations at a lower cost.”
Gartner's 2014 predictions for government highlight the logical consequences and impacts that flow from the adoption of cloud computing, mobile devices, social media and accessibility to new sources of information.
By 2017, public cloud offerings will grow to account for more than 25% of government business services in domains other than national defense and security.
Governments will increasingly favor cloud computing over long-running in-house IT deployments to contain costs and increase predictability. Nevertheless, the heightened sensitivities of many governments, particularly in Europe, will act as the limiting factor on the speed of take up as new, more stringent policies, and possibly legislation on cloud adoption, are developed and implemented.
It's essential for CIOs to recognize that they have a proactive role in ensuring that public confidence in government data handling is maintained by ensuring that data protection policies, contractual arrangements and practices are sound and aligned.
By 2017, as many as 35% of government shared-service organizations will be managed by private sector companies.