Top 10 technologies govt need to consider in 2016

BANGALORE, INDIA: Four new trends emerged in 2016 with the potential to significantly benefit government performance within the next three to five years. Analytics everywhere, smart machines, software-defined architecture and risk-based security will each challenge governance, human resources management, sourcing and financing practices.

Here are the top 10 technologies that Gartner recommends for CIOs' and IT leaders' consideration in 2016:

1. Digital Workplace

The government workforce is increasingly populated with digitally literate employees. The digital workplace promotes collaborative work styles; supports decentralized, mobile work environments; and embraces employees' personal choice of technologies.

2. Multichannel Citizen Engagement

Adopting a citizen-centric information management strategy with multichannel citizen engagement opportunities will deliver quantifiable benefits.

3. Open Any Data

Open any data in government results from "open by default" or "open by preference" governance policies and information management practices. These make license-free data available in machine-readable formats to anyone who has the right to access it without any requirement for identification or registration.

4. Citizen e-ID

As government becomes more digitalized, digital identity will need to become more reliable in order to serve as the core for all digital transactions. Citizen electronic identification (e-ID) refers to the orchestrated set of processes and technologies managed by governments to provide a secure domain to enable citizens to access these core resources or services.

5. Analytics Everywhere

The pervasive use of analytics at all stages of business activity and service delivery allows leading government agencies to shift from the dashboard reporting of lagging indicators to autonomous business processes and business intelligence (BI) capabilities that help humans make better context-based decisions in real time.

6. Smart Machines

Government IT leaders must explore smart machines as enhancements to existing business practices, and possibly as foundations for new public services or ways of accomplishing business goals altogether.

7. Internet of Things

Government business models are emerging that take advantage of the IoT; for example, pay-for-use or subscription-based taxation models, smart waste bin collection on city streets, and the remote monitoring of elderly patients in assisted-living settings.

8. Digital Government Platforms

Globally, governments are taking a platform approach to simplify processes, improve citizen interaction and reduce expenditure. Digital platforms reduce effort and facilitate user-centric design.

9. Software-Defined Architecture

Software-defined architecture (SDA) inserts an intermediary between the requester and the provider of a service so that the service can change more dynamically. It improves the manageability and agility of the code so that the organization can respond to the fluidity requirements of digital government and the IoT.

10. Risk-Based Security

Government CIOs must adopt a threat-aware, risk-based security approach that allows governments to make knowledgeable and informed decisions about risks in a holistic fashion, allowing for a wiser allocation of resources; more sound decisions about risks and their impacts on government missions, operations, assets and people; and engagement of senior leadership in risk-based decisions.