Top trends and priorities focus on securing operations

We met with 146 state, provincial and local government executives to understand their top priorities and how they are preparing for and adapting to key trends shaping their organizations. This year, executives are prioritizing:

  • Protecting data and operations through cybersecurity
  • Improving the citizen experience through digitization and responsible use of AI
  • Increasing operational efficiency and business agility through modernization and optimization
Government executive speaking on mobile

Trusted data is imperative for insights-led actions to improve citizen experiences, and to explore AI solutions.

93%
cite improving data quality and management as the top data strategy improvement initiative over the next 3 years
41%
are producing results from their data privacy and protection strategy
30%
cite AI as the top innovation priority over the next 3 years

Challenges persist with talent shortages and legacy systems

 

  • Outdated systems continue to block digital progress
    48% say legacy systems pose a high challenge to successful implementation of their digitization strategy.
  • Modernization to rise
    Executives plan to modernize more than 40% of their application portfolio, +24pp in 2 years vs today.
  • Greater cloud migration planned
    Executives cite plans to migrate more than 40% of their application portfolio to the cloud +15pp in 2 years vs. today.
  • Use of managed services to rise
    Executives see greater reliance on managed services over the next 3 years for applications (+8pp vs. today) and infrastructure (+8pp vs. today).
  • Majority cite IT hiring challenges
    86% say they have difficulty recruiting IT talent.

 

Business women in conversation

What digital leaders do to accelerate results

Organizations generating expected results from their digitization strategies—the digital leaders—share common attributes that enable them to accelerate outcomes compared to others. For example, in state, provincial and local government, digital leaders:

two mechanical gears icon

Modernize >20% of applications

+35pp

vs. others*

padlock with connectors icon

Produce results from data privacy & protection strategies

+54pp

vs. others*

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Use full/substantial managed services for applications

+12pp

vs. others*

*Those building or launching their digitization strategy
pp = percentage points

Recommendations for accelerating results

1

Increase agility by reevaluating modernization strategies to accelerate outcome velocity.

2

Invest in secure ecosystems to support responsible digital transformation and business innovation.

3

Improve IT talent sourcing by rethinking strategies and partnering with providers that have deep local experience.

4

Build a solid data foundation to responsibly explore new technology for data and AI to become insights driven.

5

Focus on strategic alignment to adopt new technology and business models aligned with the business to fully optimize citizen outcomes.
Business people on discussion

 

At CGI, we help state, provincial and local governments improve transparency and productivity, and realize secure, citizen centric digital transformation. Learn more about our offerings:

 

CIO Advisory    Cybersecurity IT modernization & cloud    Advanced analytics    Artificial intelligence