COVID-19 has further accelerated the timeline for Digital Transformation in government departments. Scott Ho, Vice President Asia Pacific Japan – Lucidworks, explains the top five priorities that CIOs need to consider to ensure a smooth transformation.
In the private sector, we have already seen enterprises and e-commerce companies use Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered digital experiences to great benefit as a differentiator for their employees and customers. Likewise, in the public sector there has been growing pressure from politicians and citizens to invest in new technologies to modernize legacy systems and achieve better outcomes for the public.
Initiatives, such as the Australian Digital Transformation strategy, outlines how the Australian government departments plan to deliver world-leading digital services by 2025. With COVID-19 further accelerating the timeline for Digital Transformation in government departments, the Australian public sector must equip departments with the ability to deal with increased digital workloads while improving employee productivity and ensuring government services and policy outcomes are efficient and easily accessible.
As with all industries, public and private, Digital Transformation strategies are most effective in small doses. Public sector CIOs need not get lost in the challenge – focus on these five issues and tackle them one at a time, prioritizing what is most important based on the outcomes your department is charged with.
Technical debt must go
Poor digital experiences are often a result of legacy systems that require a disproportionally high level of maintenance. Technical debt is a true lose-lose situation: high operational costs as well as poor user experience. In order to streamline the Digital Transformation process, CIOs should begin by reviewing technical debt. The accumulation of legacy systems over time often leaves IT departments to deal with multiple, siloed software solutions that are clunky, at best, and in many instances are unnecessary all together. Keeping the lights on (KTLO) operations are often associated with legacy applications that provide a poor employee experience and can impede fulfillment of department goals. Once technical debt is identified, CIOs can find modern solutions that best fits the needs of their department.
Use the cloud to your advantage
After you have taken stock of your department’s current technology investments, look for services that were created internally that could be replaced with a cloud offering. The main reason to move to the cloud is to offload the work that could be done more affordably by a cloud services provider. Even heavily regulated industries like financial services and healthcare are turning to the cloud for cost-savings and shifting their employees to more Value Add, core mission work.
Cloud can be one of the biggest game-changers for often overworked and underfunded government departments. As with all systems overhauls, it can be difficult to get leadership on the same page. However, the cost savings and efficiency boost afforded by cloud could be the swaying factor.
Data-driven decisions are key
Data and analytics capabilities are one of the top priorities for public sector CIOs. Especially during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for advanced and accurate analytics is mission-critical.
Data aggregation and analysis, with inclusion of both structured and unstructured data across silos, provides leaders with a more complete picture. CIOs should have as much information available as possible before making decisions about what the key problems are and where to prioritize. Data affords CIOs with the visibility to identify pain points and confirm areas of their department that are running efficiently. In today’s data-driven age, there is no excuse for decision makers who aren’t informed by data in one form or another.
Invest in AI, you won’t regret it
Once the data has been identified it can be used to deliver insights. However, government department data sets can often be large and complex as they straddle not only information of internal activities, but also sensitive personal information of citizens and employees. This is where AI can help to ensure data is sorted and analyzed in a manner that is both efficient and compliant.
In fact, there are so many different use cases for AI and Machine Learning in the government it may be hard to know where to prioritize first. Some areas to consider for initial investments: relevant and precise knowledge retrieval, providing a more personalized citizen experience in digital portals, streamlining application processes that are redundant or clunky or automating basic tasks from overworked staff.
One use case is AI-powered search. It is challenging for agencies to leverage knowledge across their entire organization, often minimizing the value of the data. Take the next Australian census, due in August 2021, as an example. After collecting nearly 17 million census responses, the data must be collected and collated in such a way that reports for politicians, businesses and citizens can be produced quickly and easily. Here, AI algorithms can play a pivotal role in sorting and collating data quickly and efficiently so statisticians can focus on pulling insights rather than data admin.
Modernize digital portals
Many of the points we have already discussed will play a role in modernizing digital portals: minimizing technical debt, offloading unnecessary work through cloud migration, prioritizing problem areas using data, improving knowledge retrieval and creating a personalized experience for employees and citizens with AI. Nonetheless, another important step to consider is adding a conversational component to these digital portals to unburden your support staff, decrease call center expenses and complete your core mission of getting information into the hands of people who need it.
Conversational applications, like chatbots or virtual assistants allow users to help themselves before intervention from employees is required. Particularly now that in-person interactions have been severely restricted through social distancing regulation, it is critical that government departments find a way to manage the influx of website users without crippling user experience. We have seen that users are increasingly eager to self-solve given frustrating and lengthy experiences with call centers and the decrease in availability of in-person support.
Public sector CIOs across all departments from intelligence to defense and civilian services are increasing investments in Digital Transformation initiatives. While the process can appear overwhelming to start with, there are immense benefits for departments that continually ensures technology investments are aligned with the services they are charged with providing. The digitized public service is nearly here whether you like it or not, so is your department ready?
