Press Release

Analysts to Discuss the Role of Data in Digital Government at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, February 26-27 in Sydney, Australia

Cloud solutions, cybersecurity and analytics are the top technologies targeted for new and additional spending by public sector CIOs in 2018, while data center infrastructure is the most commonly targeted for cost savings, according to a survey from Gartner, Inc.

Sixteen percent of government CIOs said they plan to increase spending on business intelligence (BI) and analytics (16 percent) and data management (six percent) in 2018 (see Table 2).

Gartner's 2018 CIO Agenda Survey gathered data from 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and across major industries, including 461 government CIOs. Government respondents are segmented into national or federal; state or province (regional); local; and defence and intelligence, to identify trends specific to each tier.

Digital transformation is the top-ranked business priority among government CIOs overall, followed by security and governance.

'Digital transformation revolves around data. To be successful, public sector CIOs need to focus on expanding their data and analytics capabilities and creating a data-centric culture, by increasing the availability of open data and APIs for internal use and public consumption,' said Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner. 'Building out data analytics infrastructure is fundamental to improving government program outcomes and services to citizens.'

Top Business Priorities

The survey found that digital business /digital transformation is more important for government (first priority for 18 percent of respondents) than for all industries (17 percent), with the exception of defence and intelligence agencies (six percent). Private sector companies ranked it second, after growth/market share. The next three business priorities for government are security, safety and risk (13 percent); governance, compliance and regulations (12 percent); and technology initiatives/improvements (11 percent).

'Government CIOs have conflicting priorities - to bring transformative change to their organizations, while pursuing compliance-oriented priorities,' said Mr. Howard. 'They will need to work constructively with other business leaders to agree how to balance risk and innovation to support digital transformation.'

Top Technologies to Achieve the Organization's Mission

In response to the question 'Which technology investment is most crucial to achieving your organization's mission?' cloud and BI/analytics were mentioned by 19 percent and 18 percent of government CIOs respectively, followed by infrastructure/data centre at 11 percent (see Table 1). National and federal CIOs are the exception, placing customer relationship managementas a distant third.

Table 1. Top Tech to Win

Rank

Government Priorities

% Respondents

1

Cloud services/solutions

19%

2

BI/analytics

18%

3

Infrastructure/data centre

11%

4

Digitalization/digital marketing

6%

5

Customer relationship management

5%

6

Security and risk

5%

7

Networking, voice and data communications

4%

8

Legacy modernization

4%

9

Enterprise resource planning

4%

10

Mobility/mobile applications

3%

Source: Gartner (October 2017)

Four categories that differ from other sectors:

'Many government CIOs are rebalancing capital expenditure (capex) and operating expenditure (opex) spending patterns to reduce technical debt, while making the strategic shift to cloud,' Mr. Howard said. 'They should consider cloud as the means to accelerate the digitalization of their organizations and enable the business optimization that results.'

Top New Tech Investments

Consistent with ranking cloud, analyticsand infrastructure/data centeras crucial to achieving the organization's mission, government CIOs also anticipate increased spending in these areas.

Table 2. Top New Tech Spending

Rank

Government Priorities

% Respondents

1

Cloud services/solutions

19%

2

Cyber/information security

17%

3

BI/analytics

16%

4

Infrastructure/data centre

14%

5

Digitalization/digital marketing

7%

6

Data management

6%

7

Communications/connectivity

6%

8

Networking, voice/data communications

6%

9

Application development

5%

10

Software - development or upgrades

5%

Source: Gartner (October 2017)

While only five percent of government CIOs considered security and riskas crucial to achieving the organization's mission, 17 percent expect to boost spending in cyber/information security. This indicates that security is not a competitive differentiator for government, but additional spending over historical levels in this area is warranted as a response to relentless attempts to exploit system vulnerabilities.

'The lessons of reputational damage and individual harm that can result from a data breach or compromised security have not been lost on business leaders,' Mr. Howard said. 'Consequently, they're willing to allocate more resources and attention to lower risk exposure from cyberattacks.'

Gartner clients can read more in the report '2018 CIO Agenda: Government Insights.'

Gartner Data & Analytics Summit

Gartner analysts will provide additional analysis on data and analytics leadership trends at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2018, taking place in Sydney, Grapevine, Texas, London, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mumbai, India and Tokyo. Follow news and updates from the events on Twitter using #GartnerDA.

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