Government Chief Information Officers (CIOs) must ensure their IT strategy and capabilities are agile and scalable enough to keep pace with changing political priorities and citizen demands. In this blog post, we will identify the top challenges facing state and local governments in the year ahead and key accelerators to addressing those challenges. Government CIOs and public sector IT leaders can use this research to articulate how digital investments can support leadership priorities.
Challenge #1: Creating a Unified Source of Data Truth
Many CIOs and public sector IT leaders are under pressure to promote financial stewardship and transparency, engage a diverse workforce, and embrace agility in an uncertain age. Executives need to seek higher levels of transparency in financial and operational performance to uncover insights that can enhance decision-making and create value. Of course, to quantify value, IT leaders need information.
Challenge #2: Transforming Data into Workable Information
We had the opportunity to interview Darren Rozenek, the CIO at the City of Akron, and get his insight about the challenges and priorities he is facing in the year ahead. "Now that we are coming out of Covid and most government agencies are back, ensuring the data that municipalities and state and local governments maintain is utilized and leveraged efficiently and effectively is the next hurdle," Darren says. "We need to become better stewards of the data to become a more efficient organization, and reporting and dashboarding is key to that.”
Visual analytics, such as dashboards, graphs, and charts, have revolutionized reporting and can help public sector IT leaders better comprehend complex data by making reports more accessible and straightforward.
Workday includes powerful analytics and reporting toolkits that make analyzing and making decisions on the same platform easy. Users can build charts and visualizations, monitor performance and other topics of interest with customizable dashboards, create detailed reports, and perform competitive benchmarking all within one system. With these meaningful analytics, business leaders can recommend actions to accelerate performance and gain a competitive advantage.
Challenge #3: Relying on Paper-Based Workflows
Government workers responsible for citizen services often spend significant time dealing with obsolete, inefficient processes and paper-based workflows. Manual work can affect productivity and response time to citizen requests and is more prone to errors.
Investing in Intelligent Automation (IA) and tools like Automation Anywhere can help government workers respond to changing priorities more efficiently and focus on citizen services. Combining Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), IA accelerates and streamlines processes and allows software bots to handle time-consuming administrative tasks so that human workers can focus on higher-value, mission-critical work. AI can lead to business efficiency, increased output, reduced lead times, improved service quality, and countless other benefits.
Given those benefits, it is no surprise that Intelligent Automation is at the top of many CIOs’ agendas. In fact, 90% of State and Local governments will have implemented Artificial Intelligence by 2025.
Challenge #4: Ransomware
The public sector has become a prime target for cybercriminals because of the copious amounts of sensitive information that state and local governments hold. As a result, governments are striving for greater resilience in cybersecurity. According to the 2023 CIO Agenda Insights for State and Local Governments, 64% of respondents will spend more on cyber information and security in 2023 compared to 2022. 15% also said that investing and implementing cybersecurity is a top priority for their enterprise.
State and local policymakers must adopt complete, risk-based cybersecurity strategies and instill flexible best practices that can adapt to an evolving threat landscape. With organizations facing more sophisticated security threats, it's critical to deliver security and data privacy across all aspects of service. State and local governments should ensure that their systems are backed by security, privacy, and compliance.
Workday is an example of a cloud-based solution deeply committed to protecting its clients' data and ensuring safety at its technology's core. The City of Akron consolidated its core applications and delivered new functionality and higher security after deploying Workday Full Platform.
Challenge #5: High Turnover and Employee Retention
State and local governments struggle with high turnover and job growth as the economy recovers post-pandemic. One reason for this is that temporary layoffs remain as cities and states increase previously scaled-back services. Hiring freezes and layoffs have also been a result of budget pressures. In addition, public sector professionals are exiting the field for more competitive salaries and flexible schedules. As a result, local governments need help finding qualified professionals to fill vacancies, making it challenging to provide high-quality services to citizens.
In response to slow growth and fewer jobs, local governments must prioritize employee retention and building a more robust workforce. They must rethink how to maximize skills, automate manual work, and create ways to address gaps. Workday provides different products such as Extend, Peakon Voice, and Human Capital Management, all of which provide visibility into talent and skills gaps and improve recruiting.
At Collaborative Solutions, we help state and local governments ensure their IT strategies are fit to keep pace with changes in political priorities and citizen demands. With global resources, deep Workday knowledge, a proven deployment methodology, and extensive government experience, Collaborative Solutions is uniquely qualified to navigate your complex government challenges.
Check out our Government page to learn how Collaborative Solutions can help you overcome your government challenges.
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