The Public Sector Needs Fewer Tools and More Solutions

If you’ve ever wanted to build a house, you know there’s a lot to consider: location, design, features, and costs. We don’t really focus on the tools needed to make it happen — that’s for the construction company to figure out.

Over the past 20 years of working on government tech projects, I’ve noticed that these undertakings are approached similarly. Organizations know exactly what they want to build, what they want it to accomplish, and how much they want to spend — but instead of being able to give the blueprint to a builder, they’re handed a hammer and expected to figure it out themselves.

Public sector organizations face a long list of data availability needs when it comes to reporting, analytics, transparency, and budget management — and the tech market that serves them provides a toolbox full of tools instead of solutions.

Fortunately, the emergence of the cloud and SaaS solutions has changed the tech landscape for the public sector. They now have the opportunity explore pre-built solutions that easily connect and present their data in a way that every department, executive, employee, or even constituent can access and understand.

Remove the Burden From IT

By delivering solutions designed for specific business needs and industries, this new wave of cloud-based SaaS removes an incredible burden from the IT teams who currently find themselves as the go-to people for creating, installing, applying, and maintaining complex application, reporting, and information systems.

Mobile-friendly SaaS solutions improve transparency and communication throughout entire government offices, empowering departments to work faster and smarter. They serve as one-stop shops for recording and disseminating data, and they even offer customizable presentation dashboards that can be distributed internally or externally.

SaaS can provide immediate financial benefits for public offices that find themselves embarking on costly, complicated custom-built business intelligence projects alongside their budgetary and ERP software implementation. These groups stand to save millions of dollars on their BI projects alone by adopting SaaS solutions while also freeing up their IT teams, trimming waste and inefficiency, and boosting transparency.

These solutions provide organizations with a home for their past and present data that allows for the quick and constant management of fiscal health, spending, budget planning, and revenues.

The Perks of Cloud-Based SaaS

Here are a few key benefits public organizations see when they make this switch:

• Breaking down silos: Rather than limit data-related endeavors to IT teams and force them to devise sprawling data systems, a platform that’s pre-designed to address the public sector’s reporting and analytical needs allows all teams to instantly access vital information. Instead of acting within the constraints of organizational silos, departments can cross-collaborate on data-driven projects

• A universal data lens: When you have data coming in from multiple disconnected platforms, it’s tough to synthesize it into unified, usable insights. Utilizing one streamlined analytics platform allows users to easily find the information they need in a ready-to-use format.

• Strategic continuity: When the entire organization can access relevant metrics and up-to-date information on demand, it will see improved communication, alignment, and performance across the board.

• Real-time notifications: Many of these platforms offer the ability to set notifications for when significant changes occur in metrics or when certain thresholds are hit. Learning about these milestones as they happen boosts responsiveness.

• Public education: Government agencies that use a unified data system can easily share information on programs and services with their constituencies through customizable transparency centers. These solutions allow for industries and communities to work together with vendors to continue to deliver solutions that are fast, relevant, and cost-effective.

• Reduced risk: A prebuilt solution that’s ready to roll on day one eliminates the risk of costly project overruns, data migration nightmares, and other issues that cause major headaches.

When governments don’t have a handle on the influx of information they receive every day, they miss opportunities to strengthen their output. Cloud, SaaS, and mobile-friendly solutions are designed to solve common data-related challenges and will undoubtedly help the public sector become more effective, become more data-driven, and develop a more modern, efficient, and transparent image in the public’s eyes.