Looking Forward: How Technology Will Shape Government in the Next 3-5 Years

Below is an excerpt from GovLoop’s Latest Report: Crafting a Comprehensive Digital Government Strategy

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GovLoop’s research defines a digital government as “the tools, applications, resources and methodologies allowing government to leverage new and emerging technology to serve the most mission-centric goals of the agency.” Below is an excerpt from GovLoop’s Digital Government Strategy guide discussing where professionals believe government will be in the near future.

With each of our interviewees, GovLoop asked participants to share insights regarding where they think government will be in the next five years. Across the board, interviewees were confident that technology is truly going to transform government, and serve as a way to re-imagine and create a 21st century government. With budgetary pressures mounting, and agencies being forced to do more with less, now is the time where innovation should occur in government.

Further, Jones believes that self-service modules and programs will expand in the public sector. As Jones identifies, “People are going to have the tools they need to do the job and government is going to have gone a long way towards self service. Government has reached the perfect storm of not enough staff, not enough money and a generation shift in what we expect and are able to do online.”

Through emerging technology, Bozzelli is also confident that the way government does business will be transformed. Bozzelli states, “If you think of government as driven by cost, there are some cost-specific things that will continue to happen. That is cloud for data and device independence; those are going to be two things that are not an option. In three years, if we think about what’s driven by the citizen, I think that crowdsourcing of solutions will drive the government to change how it does business, particularly with citizens.”

Undoubtedly, the public sector is ripe for innovation, as Horne states, “In the next 3-5 years we are going to witness a sea-change in the way digital communications is managed from a public sector perspective.” Akers agreed with Horne’s sentiments, by asserting that incremental investments will lead to improved services, stating, “The way to improve services is through incremental investments in technology, leverage the web more, generate cost savings by providing interaction and automatic submission of documents/forms online, provide better content online, or better ways to get access to that content which minimizes calls into the department in the agency.”

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Thank you to our industry partners for sponsoring the GovLoop Report, Crafting a Comprehensive Digital Government Strategy. With any questions about this report, please reach out to Pat Fiorenza, Senior Research Analyst, at [email protected].