Each year, CGI meets face-to-face with business and IT leaders to hear their perspectives on the trends affecting their organizations. In 2017, we conducted 392 in-person interviews with government clients to hear more about their top trends and priorities.

Top trends

Digital transformation and cybersecurity continue to be top trends, increasing in importance to state and local governments compared to 2016. The trend making the biggest move is use of cloud and agile solutions, up more than 50 percent compared to last year.

Top 2017 trends in state and local government

  • 95% Becoming digital organizations to meet icreasing citizen expectations
  • 86% Protecting through cybersecurity
  • 65% Increasing use of public and private cloud
  • 65% Coping with budget pressure through IT consolidation and process automation
  • 61% Assuring regulatory compliance

Looking ahead, state and local government executives cite the impact of an aging workforce and challenges attracting and retaining top talent as well as the need to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) to achieve Smart Cities as top trends to watch.

Investing for innovation

The need to improve citizen services drives business priorities, while IT executives cite the need for IT modernization in order to improve efficiency as top of mind. In a year when IT investment growth has returned to state and local governments (up 2.8%), innovation investment is focused on becoming more citizen-centric. Governments also plan to accelerate investment in data and predictive analytics and cybersecurity over the next three years.

Focus areas for government client innovation

  • Digital transformation
  • Data and predictive analytics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Need to modernize
  • Operational improvement
  • Collaboration across the ecosystem

Discover the insight

Download additional trend information from the 2017 CGI Client Global Insights state and local government summary, and contact us for a copy of the full report and to arrange a personal discussion with a CGI government expert for further analysis and insights.