Welcome 2020!

Happy New Year to our customers, partners, and friends! We’re excited to share that the annual Government Technology’s GovTech 100 2020 list has been released and we’ve been named to the list for the third year in a row. The list is an annual update of the top 100 companies focused on and making a difference for state and local governments. That sort of recognition means we’re focused on exactly the right thing, working with our customers to help them build safe and prosperous communities.

Last year we ambitiously started a tradition of predicting what the coming year holds for the govtech industry. After looking back, and considering what is to come this year, we’re giving ourselves an “average” score. Mostly because many of the areas continue to be a focus for this year. Below is our humble prediction outlook for 2020. We’d love to know what you think — you can post a comment here or tweet to @Calytera with the hashtag #2020GovTechPredictions.

• Last year we predicted gridlock at the U.S. federal level and national election focus in Canada would keep citizen focus on the efforts of state, provincial, and local governments to improve citizen services. The Canadian national election has passed but there’s no question that citizen attention to the U.S. Federal government in 2020 will focus much more on elections than on government IT projects. We predict that means citizen expectations of state and local governments will increase again this year. With citizens continuing to closely monitor if the current economic expansion will continue, and as citizen distrust in “big tech” continues to grow, many are likely to continue to demand that state and local governments become more efficient and more citizen-friendly. One growing expectation we have — citizens will increasingly expect a seamless interaction with any department of the government with which they are interacting. That increases pressure on government technology professionals to make sure they are using one common data set for customers and citizens.
• We also predicted “Smart Community” would be the buzzword of the 2019 govtech year last January. By many measures that prediction likely came to pass. Citizen interest in smart community efforts will likely remain strong in 2020 but focus on ‘real world’ and immediate benefits is increasing. The smart community projects that get the most attention won’t be the big-bang attention-grabbing ones, but rather those that help to solve real problems in real-time. In our headquarters hometown of Austin, differing opinions about how to best help those who are homeless have become a local political hot button. As an example of our prediction, expect any technology solution that helps move people to resources that can help and permanent shelter to receive lots of attention.
• In 2019, we predicted Government IT procurement will increase its focus on modern and advanced technology — like artificial intelligence. That wasn’t a great leap, just turn to any estimate of state and local govtech spending. We’ll keep the same prediction for 2020 but estimate more and more governments will turn their attention first to how to digitize and collect the enormous amount of potential data they have — if they can collect common data sets. Last year we also predicted that Internet of Things (IoT) sensors would become more ubiquitous in public infrastructure as the average price per sensor continued to fall. While it’s difficult to measure that, it almost certainly has come to pass, and we predict another increase in 2020. But we do think the primary “modernization” drive for state and local governments in the coming year will be about how to leverage data to make true citizen benefit changes.
• Finally, we thought that data analytics will be one of the most sought-after skills by governments and govtech companies alike in 2019. That’s another easy prediction to make, and for 2020, we’ll double down and expect more of the same. Governments hold enormous amounts of data that can help drive efficiency, power strategic planning, increase revenues and more. But only if it’s captured, analyzed, and acted on.

Our best wishes for a happy, prosperous, and data-filled 2020 for everyone. What are your plans and predictions for the coming year? Be sure to let us know!