What the Digital Transformation Journey Looks Like for State and Local Governments

In the digital era, citizen expectations are evolving rapidly. Individuals now anticipate seamless and personalized experiences across various aspects of their lives, including interactions with government entities.

Before we go further, let’s review our collection of digital transformation articles.  We’ve discussed Cyber Resilience and its holistic approach in Cyber Resilience Is Not the Same as Disaster Recovery. Here’s Why That Matters. We’ve examined what experience-as-a-service, or XaaS, is and why state and local governments are making the shift. Finally, we’ve offered three steps to incorporate XaaS into your digital transformation strategy.

Now, it’s time to summarize the benefits of digital transformation in these areas, and how it can help state and local governments enhance citizen engagement.

Clearly, one distinct challenge many governments face are citizen expectations of reliable, seamless, and personalized experiences across various government entities. With a robust digital transformation strategy in place, here’s how state and local governments can begin tackling this challenge:

• Ensuring secure and reliable services using an outcome-based cyber resilience mindset.  This approach has the following benefits:
  • Breaking down the silos between security, technology, and business sectors.
  • Addressing and aligning various sector incentives to achieve outcomes.
  • Optimizing technology and security investments for the biggest bang for the buck.

• Personalization and tailored services through XaaS:
  • By leveraging the right data and analytics, governments can gain important insights into individual preferences and needs, allowing them to tailor services accordingly.
  • Whether it’s a customized dashboard for updating a drivers’ license or personalized notifications and reminders, XaaS ensures that the focus is on providing citizens with information and services relevant to their specific needs.

• Simplified access and seamless interactions:
  • XaaS can help simplify access to government services using digital platforms, such as mobile apps and online portals, helping to centralize services through a single point of access. The key here is deploying intuitive user interfaces, self-service options, and clear guidance, so citizens can navigate processes with ease and complete tasks efficiently.

• Proactive communications and feedback loops for continuous improvement:
  • Rather than transactional interactions, XaaS can help governments establish more proactive communication channels. Think of regular updates from a townhall, policy changes, service improvements, or community initiatives.
  • An integral part of XaaS is incorporating citizen feedback into the service delivery process. With easy channels for citizens to share their experiences, suggestions, and concerns, governments can actively listen and respond accordingly. Be it social media or other platforms, XaaS can help governments identify pain points, address issues, and continuously improve services on an iterative basis.

A goal of all public-sector IT leaders is to achieve a digital transformation journey that results in a positive enterprise outcome. Evolving citizen expectations, as well as the rapid pace of technology evolution, present significant challenges. However, with XaaS and its as-a-service model, governments have a clear path to achieving their digital transformation and end user experience goals.

Not only can the paths of cyber resilience and XaaS help governments attain the right expertise and technology, but they also can help save time and expense. XaaS can ease the burden of filling the IT skills gap, while freeing employees to focus on mission-critical tasks.

Lastly, governments can use the suggestions in our recent articles to affordably implement advanced solutions, such as AI and advanced analytics, and completely transform and secure the entire citizen experience.

Learn more about Experience-as-a-Service here.  

Nelson Moe is the Strategy Principal for SLED at Iron Bow Technologies. He formerly served as the CIO of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Agency Head for the Virginia Information Technologies agency. There, Nelson managed the IT enterprise infrastructure for the entire Virginia executive branch of 63 agencies and over 60,000 state employees. He led an IT staff of 200 FTEs and manages multiple IT infrastructure contracts totaling over $360M per year spend. Under his leadership, the team successfully migrated the IT services amounting to $360M/annual IT spend to a multi-supplier contract model. Nelson was responsible for the state IT vision, strategy, day-to-day operations, Cyber posture, Business Continuity/ Disaster Recovery (BC/DR), Cloud Brokerage Service and investment controls for the state’s executive branch information technology efforts. He was also in charge of approving all Virginia executive branch IT Procurements more than $1M (about $425M per year) as well as RFP, contract, and project approvals.