Increasing efficiency and transparency, improving and aligning processes, enhancing citizen satisfaction and trust, meeting the needs of rapidly changing demographics and balancing costs while optimizing efficiency: it all plays a role in the ongoing IT modernization and digital transformation of government.
While organizations may gauge mission success differently from agency to agency, there are many commonalities in the challenges faced throughout their digital transformation journey. Regardless of role, whether public healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, contracting and defense, citizen services or regulatory, agencies must digitally transform to continue to drive results and accomplish their agency goals.
Using Technology to Improve Operations
Appian, In partnership with GovLoop, recently released a research-based report, "Enabling Digital Transformation in Government," asking respondents to define what digital transformation meant for their agency. From the responses, a common theme arose as public servants defined transformation as the appropriate use of technology to improve operations and better serve citizens.
In fact, 68 percent of respondents said digital technologies were essential to support government innovation and transformation. Furthermore, most respondents indicated that it was most important to innovate digital services and applications to continue meeting mission goals.
However, one primary obstacle to innovation is the current composition of government IT infrastructures. Most current agency technology systems simply do not support the type of digital services and processes that are expected of organizations today.
In fact, 56 percent of survey respondents cited the inability to integrate new solutions with outdated technologies as a primary barrier to effectively innovating.
Legacy systems were most often built for unique agency needs, met in a specific IT environment. They were not built to integrate with newer environments like cloud, nor were they made to be heavily altered as new service demands arise.
Costs of Technology a Major Concern
Not only do these legacy systems present integration roadblocks, they also consume already-constrained government resources. More than half of survey respondents cited the costs of new technology as a major concern. Data shows, however, that an even bigger cost barrier to innovation is legacy IT.
For most agencies, well over half of their IT budget is spent on operating and maintaining (O&M) current IT systems.
68.6 percent of the current federal IT budget is being spent on O&M, with only 22.9 percent spent on development, modernization and enhancements.
Survey respondents cited similar conditions ñ 43 percent said the cost of operating and maintaining current IT systems hindered effective innovation.
Tactics and Tools to Meet Mission Goals
All of these insights and more are now available by downloading this report today. In it you will find not only the results of the survey of government employees and the challenges they're facing, but it will equip you with tactics and tools to move forward and meet your agency's mission goals.
Additionally, you can visit our Federal resource center to see how Appian's Application Platform-as-a-Service, low-code application development platform can take a difficult and expensive systems portfolio and turn it into a cost and time efficient approach. And, take the opportunity to learn more about our Appian Accelerators that can help you jumpstart your program modernization efforts.
