State digitalization: When the efforts bear fruit
The Digital Survey is a biennial survey that evaluates how efficiently the states leverage technology in improving their operations and services. More particularly, the results are quantifiable and based on “a set of criteria which included actions supporting State priorities and policies to improve operations or services, hard and soft-dollar savings/benefits, progress since the last survey, innovative solutions, and effective collaboration”.
This year, the survey’s results show us a wide range of areas and projects in which state governments are working on to ensure better service quality and operation efficiency. The most common trends are cybersecurity, open data portal, cloud computing.
In a highly networked world today, which makes each individual so vulnerable to cyber risk, it is no surprise to see how many states put cyber security in their top priorities. In addition to law enforcement, training agencies and organizations, some states also updated their systems with ransomware protections and encryption of private data like Utah or provided the cyber alert system in the case of Washington.
By going to the cloud and outsourcing a part or the whole IT system, the government will be able to allocate more workforce and resources on project management and applications and mitigate the costs for IT infrastructure maintenance and upgrades. The new consolidated, virtualized environment will also prompt effective collaboration and communication across departments and agencies.
In term of open government data, it is crucial that some states need to emphasize not only on openness, accountability and transparency, which belong to the supply side but also on the demand side, civic engagement and participation. Only by encouraging the citizen uptakes, interactions with the open portals and gathering feedbacks about what types of data they need the usability of the web interfaces, how easily and quickly the information is retrieved, then the states can increase the practicability of such data and services.
The survey results indicates how sophisticated, innovative and proactive states are in their approach to technology-based services. I am excited to see the outcomes of their relentless efforts in integrating technology into all aspects of the government operation so that technology is no longer icing on the cake but the indispensable ingredient in building a more efficient and transparent government.
References:
Digital States Survey 2016 Results. Retrieved September 30, 2016, from http://www.govtech.com/cdg/digital-states/Digital-States-Survey-2016-Results.html
How Digital is Your State? Retrieved September 30, 2016, from http://www.govtech.com/computing/Digital-States-2016.html#/Washington
