2025 Top 10 Trends and Priorities for Government - Local & Municipalities
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Transform communities
The Challenge
Overcome the smart city divide.
Traditional smart city approaches have focused on urban issues, leaving rural and regional governments out. These communities are interconnected and need to be collectively intelligent, requiring a shift from isolated initiatives to collaborative models.
Why It Matters
Elevate community life and sustainability.
Collaborative smart community development enhances quality of life, promotes sustainability, and fosters social cohesion. Leveraging data analytics and ensuring equitable broadband access connects communities in physical and digital realms.
The Solution
Embrace AI solutions and geographic information systems (GIS)
Local government leaders must leverage AI and implement sound GIS solutions to create smart communities. These technologies can improve decision-making and resource allocation and provide personalized services to constituents.
Ensure equitable broadband access
Enable communities to benefit from digital services and foster social inclusion by ensuring equitable access to broadband across rural and urban divides.
Manage vendors and contracts
The Challenge
Navigate vendor management risks.
Local governments often struggle with vendor management due to a lack of governance, leading to inefficiencies, increased risks, and higher costs. Without proper oversight, vendor relationships can become strained, compliance issues may arise, and the quality of service delivered can suffer. This hinders transparency, accountability, and the ability to adapt to a dynamic environment.
Why It Matters
Enhance efficiency and accountability.
Proper vendor management is crucial for local governments to control costs, mitigate risks, and comply with regulations. It ensures high-quality service delivery, fosters positive vendor relationships, and promotes transparency and accountability. This strategic approach optimizes resource allocation and enhances flexibility in a constantly changing environment.
The Solution
Craft a vision and governance structure
Define a governance structure for the vendor management program, including roles, responsibilities, decision-making processes, and progress metrics, alongside a vision statement.
Assess and categorize vendors
Conduct a thorough assessment of the current vendor landscape and existing relationships. Identify all vendors, contracts, and services in use, as well as any gaps or areas for improvement. Categorize vendors based on their criticality and track costs and deliverables over time.
Master the cloud
The Challenge
Manage diverse cloud environments.
Managing multiple cloud environments from different providers adds complexity to IT operations. A hybrid multicloud strategy combines public cloud services, private cloud infrastructure, and on-premises resources to leverage benefits while mitigating risks.
Why It Matters
Reduce risks and improve performance.
A hybrid multicloud strategy optimizes performance, reduces risks, and ensures flexibility. It enhances IT operations, improves service delivery, and adapts to a rapidly changing technological landscape.
The Solution
Conduct a comprehensive assessment and architecture design
Assess current IT infrastructure and develop a scalable, flexible architecture integrating on-premises, private, and public cloud resources. Ensuring the architecture is scalable, flexible, and interoperable across cloud environments.
Implement data management and a security strategy
Establish data management policies and a security strategy with controls like identity management, encryption, and compliance with regulations to govern the storage, access, sharing, and protection of data in the hybrid multicloud environment.
Strengthen cybersecurity practices
The Challenge
Overcome cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Local governments are prime targets for cyberattacks due to aging systems and skill gaps. Cybersecurity isn't a one-time purchase or policy; it requires robust processes, effective technologies, and advanced skill sets tailored to the specific structure of city, regional, county, or rural governments.
Why It Matters
Secure public trust.
Protecting information is crucial for all levels of government. Publicized security incidents can erode public trust and bring into question the effectiveness of government operations. Effective cybersecurity measures are essential to safeguard data, ensure compliance, and maintain the integrity of government services.
The Solution
Create a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy
Develop a systematic approach to cybersecurity, identifying threats, vulnerability, and consequences. This ensures that investments in control measures are appropriate to the risks faced by the agency.
Enhance visibility and understanding
Work with public sector executives, IT leaders, and legislative officials to improve the visibility and understanding of the community's cybersecurity posture and risk exposure.
Empower digital government
The Challenge
Meet the growing demand of digital services.
Local governments struggle to meet the growing demand for accessible and user-friendly digital services. Creating seamless and equitable digital experiences that are intuitive, secure, and build trust while also addressing complex requirements and ensuring robust authentication for transactions involving sensitive data is a growing challenge.
Why It Matters
Empower constituents.
Digital services must improve equitable access to government services and participation in democratic processes. Ensuring robust authentication and redesigning service delivery processes are crucial for reducing touchpoints, meeting service level expectations, and building accessibility and security by design.
The Solution
Identify the value streams and use cases that provide the most value
Use human-centered design, personas, and empathy mapping to identify the best value streams and use cases for digital service delivery. This includes creating user-friendly interfaces and mobile applications.
Ensure seamless access and address conflicts
Identify and address potential areas of conflict such as privacy, legal, technical, and compliance/security issues. Map value streams, shared capabilities, and conflict areas against a digital government reference architecture.
Effectively integrate AI
The Challenge
Balance the potential and risk of AI.
The potential of AI in local government scenarios has both excited and concerned technologists and policymakers. The rapid advancement of AI technologies requires governments to navigate issues related to data privacy, ethical use, and the potential displacement of workers.
Why It Matters
Harness the transformative power of AI.
AI can revolutionize local government operations, enhancing efficiency and service delivery. Understanding and leveraging these technologies is crucial for staying ahead in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
The Solution
Develop an AI strategy
Incorporate an AI strategy into the broader IT strategy and roadmap. This includes understanding and communicating to leadership the differences between AI and generative AI and establishing responsible AI policies.
Identify and prioritize use cases
Identify viable use cases for AI and generative AI, from constituent service delivery automation to threat detection and process automation. Use capability maps to identify candidate opportunities and initiatives.
Modernize IT
The Challenge
Overcome legacy system hurdles.
Local governments face significant challenges in modernizing applications to stay efficient and effective. There is often no framework to communicate and justify modernization efforts. Additionally, some users are resistant to change, and competing priorities can undermine the value of modernization.
Why It Matters
Modernize for efficiency.
Application modernization is essential to holistically serve the needs of the community. It ensures that government services are efficient, effective, and capable of meeting the demands of constituents, staff, and the organization as a whole.
The Solution
Establish a digital application vision
Guide modernization efforts and ensure alignment with organizational objectives by gaining a grounded understanding of the digital application and prioritizing attributes against digital business goals.
Define the modernization approach
Obtain a thorough view of the organization and technical complexities, risks, and impacts. Employ the right modernization techniques based on the organization's change tolerance, ensuring a smooth transition.
Attract and retain IT talent
The Challenge
Address public sector IT talent hurdles.
Traditional incentives like pensions and job security are losing appeal as candidate and employee expectations evolve. The highly structured and often unionized nature of the public sector workforce favors seniority, slowing down upward mobility for skilled new talent.
Why It Matters
Meet modern workforce expectations.
Offering flexible hiring and work models, agile governance structures, and cross-agency talent pools allows the public sector to remain competitive in the job market. These changes create a more attractive work environment and provide opportunities for skill growth and career advancement.
The Solution
Understand workforce trends and impacts
Learn about IT workforce trends and their effects on the organization. Gauge the impact of these trends on specific capabilities to stay ahead of challenges and opportunities.
Provide training and meaningful projects
Offer ongoing training and professional development, especially leadership programs. Assign IT professionals to challenging and meaningful projects that align with their interests to keep them engaged and motivated.
Manage valuable data assets
The Challenge
Bolster data management.
Strategically and effectively manage valuable data assets is challenging for local governments. Ineffective data management can lead to poor decisions, missed opportunities for engagement, and critical cybersecurity risks.
Why It Matters
Empower data-driven decisions.
Proper data management ensures that local government can leverage data assets to enhance operational efficiency and service delivery. Effective data governance and management are crucial for making informed decisions, improving experiences, and mitigating cybersecurity risks.
The Solution
Align data management with strategic plans
Ensure data initiatives support the broader objectives of the organization by aligning data management plans with agency requirements and strategic goals.
Create a collaborative plan
Unite IT and the organization in managing data assets by developing a collaborative plan. This plan should be scalable and adaptable to evolving needs.
Improve public safety
The Challenge
Navigate technology barriers.
Ineffective technology development and implementation can negatively impact the frontline experience and the relationship between public safety professionals and the communities they serve. Traditional approaches to innovation and technology delivery often fail to meet the needs of front-line staff and the community, facing intense scrutiny regarding their technology choices.
Why It Matters
Build trust through frontline efficiency.
Effective technology in public safety is essential for enhancing the efficiency and safety of front-line staff, improving community relations, and ensuring public trust. High levels of maturity in governance, deployment, community engagement, and management of technology are necessary to meet these goals.
The Solution
Focus on capabilities and value
Prioritize capabilities and value over technology type. This strategic shift-left approach ensures that strategic priorities are addressed at the front end of technology initiatives.
Balance governance and urgency
Tackle systemic funding model challenges that delay the acquisition of technologies by balancing the need for robust governance with an organizational sense of urgency.
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