Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending, budgets and investment plans. In 2020, we conducted in-person interviews with 198 client executives across 16 countries, who indicated a continued focus on meeting citizen expectations. Interviews were conducted before and after the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, providing unique insights into evolving priorities. We provide a short summary of some of these insights below and in the PDF available for download on this page.

Meeting citizen expectations still dominates top trends

Central and federal government trends remain consistent year over year, with the need to become digital to meet citizen expectations having the most impact on their organizations.
 
Protecting through cybersecurity, assuring regulatory compliance, as well as flat budgets, and implementing agile solutions also continue as top trends.

2020 top trends by impact

  1. Becoming digital for citizens
  2. Protecting through cybersecurity
  3. Assuring regulatory compliance
  4. Flat budgets and economic lags constricting spend
  5. Implementing agile solutions

 

Post-pandemic declaration trends show rise in cybersecurity

When comparing interviews before and after the pandemic declaration by the WHO, becoming digital to meet citizen expectations lessens in impact as a trend (-13%) while protecting through cybersecurity rises (+10%).

Results from digital strategies are still slow

This year, 88% of central and federal government executives report they have some form of a digital strategy in place, up from 83% last year. Of those, 40% indicate they have an enterprise-wide strategy, but just 19% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem. Rising 5 points from 2019, 20% of executives now say their organization is producing results from digital strategies.

Digital transformation is the top growing innovation investment area

Looking out over the 3 year horizon, 82% of executives indicate that digital transformation is their top area of planned innovation investment.

Interest in substantial managed services rises year-over-year

This year we asked central and federal government executives to share why they use managed services and how they plan to leverage them. The top reasons are to save costs and maintain control.  

% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years
43% 2020
35% 2019

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization 

Central and Federal - IT satisfaction chart 2020

(Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied, showing 3 out of 10 available attributes) 

For the third year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations. For most attributes, business leaders report lower satisfaction levels with their internal IT compared to IT leaders, with introducing innovation consistently earning the lowest average score. 

Learn more about the 2020 CGI Client Global Insights.

Learn more about CGI in Central and Federal Government.

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