Well I certainly intended to blog more than once a month! The DGIT team has been so busy getting out in DC attending seminars, meeting representatives on Capitol Hill, and partaking in our own "listening tour," that time has really been flying by as summer heats up here in our Nation's Capitol.
Our first task when we hit the ground here was to get some perspective. What are the biggest issues facing the government? Where will a Digital Government solve big problems, either in the government back office or in enabling the government agencies to fulfill their mission. Where do these intersect?
As we listen to influencers, policy makers, and others closely tied to government functions, we continue to hear the same themes:
-Government has not kept up with the pace of technological advancement and adoption in the private / commercial sector.
-Citizens cannot engage the way they want to and services are way too complicated to access.
-Government runs inefficiently, does not have proper visibility into or reporting on its massive wealth of data, and is facing a workforce crisis.
-Old legacy systems are driving astronomical costs while proving to be impossible to keep secure.
A true digital government enables innovation at the speed of society.
This is accomplished by:
-providing Citizen Services across all devices and platforms the way citizens now expect,
-enabling a strong, centralized workforce recruitment and development that attracts top talent,
-harnessing the power of big data in an open and transparent manner,
-and procuring using agile methods allowing fast implementation and adoption of new technologies in IT.
Most importantly, a true digital government harnesses the latest technologies, such as Cloud based services, and human training to create a complete system secure against cyber threats. We see these topics comprising 3 pillars of Digital Government: Citizen Engagement, Government Efficiency, and Cybersecurity & Privacy.
I will go into each of these major pillars of Digital Government in a series tackling one each week. I look forward to the conversation!