Deloitte released its “Government Tech Trends 2019: Beyond the digital frontier.” The report explores how the convergence of new technologies with powerful technological forces is driving disruption across government. New technologies include advanced networking, serverless computing, and intelligent interfaces; and technological forces encompass digital experiences, cognitive and cloud.
“Many government organizations are finding that each individual advancement in technology—for example, blockchain, digital reality or serverless cloud architecture—is powerful, but that the real power emerges when they combine,” said Scott Buchholz, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and chief technology officer for its government and public services practice. “Finding ways to integrate a constellation of new technologies into a new operational paradigm is the next level challenge that’s unfolding in government right now.”
Government Tech Trends 2019, based on Deloitte Tech Trends, interprets the trends with a focus on government. The report also includes a score for each trend based on its relevancy to government and the government’s readiness to adopt.
The eight trends that are giving rise to new operating models, redefining the nature of work, and dramatically changing IT’s relationship with the business include:
Macro technology forces at work – The nine technology forces at work are: cloud, analytics, digital
experience, blockchain, cognitive, digital reality, core modernization, cyber,
and the business of information technology. These forces are critical for
organizations—their controlled collision can compound the effect of a
purposeful, transformational change.
Trend in action: A supply chain can be optimized with an integrated combination
of technologies—next-gen core financial system upgrades, cloud deployments, AI
predictive models, blockchain for tracking and more.
AI-fueled organizations – Leading organizations are harnessing AI’s full potential for
data-driven decision making and generating valuable insights. To become a true
“AI-fueled” organization, a department or agency needs to find AI’s place in
the mission, rethink its talent, focus on human and machine interaction in its
environment, and deploy machine learning across core business processes and
enterprise operations.
Trend in action: Use AI and machine learning to help curb fraud, waste, and
abuse by detecting invalid, improper or mischaracterized payments.
NoOps in a serverless world – Cloud providers have doggedly automated traditional infrastructure
and security management tasks and are increasing the complexity and value of
“as a service” capabilities. As a result, technical resources are interacting
less and less with the underlying system infrastructure. Operations talent can
shift to increasingly agile teams focusing on higher-order (and higher-value)
activities that more directly support mission outcomes.
Trend in action: Pay-as-you-go models offer flexibility and cost-efficiency for
seasonal demands like tax filings or health care enrollment. Look at piloting
new application using container-based, function-based, or other new cloud
computing models.
Connectivity of tomorrow – Advanced networking offers a continuum of connectivity that can drive
the development of new products and services or transform inefficient operating
models. From edge computing and mesh networks to 5G, satellite, and
ultra-broadband, organizations across sectors and geographies are relooking at
advanced connectivity options to design their networks of tomorrow.
Trend in action: Field-deployed personnel will soon have greater bandwidth on
their mobile devices than they have at their desks today—rethink processes and
systems to take advantage of the connectivity.
Intelligent interfaces – Intelligent interfaces combine the latest in human-centered design
with leading-edge technologies such as computer vision, conversational voice,
auditory analytics, and advanced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality.
Working in concert, these techniques and capabilities can transform the ways we
engage with machines, data, and each other.
Trend in action: With AR, skilled technicians can move from one system to
another without extra training. Inspectors can use facial and image recognition
with speech capture interfaces. Indirect measures of activity time and
personnel efficiency permit digitalization and analysis.
Beyond marketing—experience reimagined – Today’s citizens expect highly personalized, contextualized
experiences. To deliver them, leading chief marketing officers are looking
inward to closer partnerships with their own CIOs and a new generation of
marketing tools and techniques powered by data-enabled emerging technologies.
Trend in action: Service programs can use advanced marketing techniques to
engage the population, gauge reactions and adjust rollouts.
DevSecOps and the cyber imperative – To enhance their approaches to cybersecurity and cyber risk,
forward-thinking organizations are embedding security, privacy, policy, and
controls into their evolved IT delivery models. DevSecOps fundamentally
transforms cyber and risk management from compliance-based activities
(typically undertaken late in the development lifecycle) into essential framing
mindsets that help shape system design from the ground up.
Trend in action: The National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug
Administration are working to standardize, automate, and virtualize processes
using close-knit teams that integrate development, security and operations into
to reduce human error, speed results and make difficult operations invisible to
the user.
Beyond the digital frontier – Digital transformation has become a rallying cry for business and
technology strategists. Yet all too often, organizations anchor their approach
on a specific technology advance. Developing a systematic approach for identifying
and harnessing opportunities born of the intersections of technology, science,
and business is an essential first step in demystifying digital transformation,
and making it concrete, achievable and measurable.
Trend in action: Cashierless stores could serve as models for the Department of
Defense Exchanges. Government health providers can use health care insurers’
AI-enabled verification of eligibility for medical procedures. Organizations
are increasingly using AI and other digital techniques to screen recruits.
“These trends are actively shaping strategic and operational transformations today, redefining IT’s role within government and forcing leaders to reimagine what it means to govern and serve against the backdrop of a global, digitally driven economy,” said Buchholz.