Digital transformation is a change in technology and processes to enhance the experience of those inside an organization and the people they interact with.According to Gartner, “80% of government organizations are still at the initial or developing digital maturity stages.” Additionally, Gartner reported in a 2020 survey that a third of government organizations felt pressure because of an increase in urgency to transform.
A survey conducted by Granicus of 115 government leaders found that 61% of them believe their organizations are not keeping up the same pace as the private sector when it comes to the adoption and implementation of modern technologies. Surprisingly, 36% of the government leaders believe that government will never be able to catch up with the private sector when it comes to technology. Regardless of how your organization compares to those in the private sector, digital transformation has numerous advantages for local governments, such as giving employees the opportunity to work from home and increasing efficiency. With local governments being asked to do more with less, digital transformation is becoming more important.
Four Benefits of Digital Transformation for Local Governments
1. Ability to Work From Home
Due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, companies and organizations had to rapidly shift from in-person operations to working from home. Organizations that already started their digital transformation had the advantage of being able to make the switch more easily. Meanwhile, organizations that had not started their transformation journey struggled with the new regulations and demands brought upon them by the pandemic.
Today, the ability to work from home is still viewed as a necessity for companies. According to Forbes, 97% of employees want to work at least partially from home, with 61% of employees wanting to be fully remote. During the pandemic, many found themselves happy to ditch long commutes that take time away they could be spending with their families. Working remotely helped some find a better work-life balance.
Modernizing an organization’s technology involves turning to cloud-based solutions. Since files are held in the cloud rather than on physical machines, technical difficulties such as being locked out of your computer, or dealing with a broken one, have faster solutions. There’s no concern about losing files or drafts of work when you lose access to a device. Cloud technology is what enables working from home.
As we move forward, the capability of working from home allows local governments to be more flexible in the face of uncertainty. A global pandemic likely won’t be the only cause of disruption that local governments will face. Hurricanes, flooding, snowstorms, and other natural weather events may hinder employees from making it to the office, leading local government organizations to pause operations. By embracing digital transformation, data and processes can be digitized and unified, allowing them to be safely accessed by the appropriate party remotely, minimizing disruptions.
2. Better Data Usage
With local government digital transformation, there will be a change in the way data is used, stored, and taken. Data can be used to inform decision-making since modernization helps with data accuracy and data relevancy. When data becomes clearer, less complicated to understand, and more accurate, it becomes more valuable. Local governments and organizations can use the information provided by data to become more productive.
Data becomes more readily available for employees to look at, however it still complies with data privacy requirements. An advantage often seen after digital transformation is how quickly data is found. Rather than searching through physical files, information can be digitally searched for and discovered.
3. Smarter Technology
Examples of new technology used with digital transformation include AI and machine learning. These technologies can be used to model and process data. Workday Adaptive Planning provides tools that allow you to easily go through the modeling process and quickly run models. Adaptive Planning also helps with creating reports and dashboards to visualize analytics.
Citizens seeking information or help from local government often visit these sites on their smartphones. A Pew Research Center study showed that 85% of the U.S. population owns a smartphone in 2021. A website that is mobile-friendly better serves its community than one that excludes mobile users.
4. Increase Efficiency
One way of improving efficiency with digital transformation is the use of intelligent automation. Intelligent automation frees up employees to focus on more value-added work rather than continually working on repetitive tasks. With intelligent automation, a digital workforce pitches in and helps turn manual processes into automatic ones. An example is data entry: when someone, either within the government or outside of it, fills out a form, rather than the data being manually entered, it can be automatically uploaded.
The standardization of processes is one of the most important aspects of digital transformation. It ensures everyone working for the organization has the same experiences. As mentioned before, employees also save time and become more efficient with data being more accessible and readily available since they are stored on the cloud instead of in physical files.
To learn more about digital transformation for local governments, visit our Government Page!
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