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Digitizing public services can be a game changer for governments. Streamlining inefficient processes, providing digital access and delivery of services to meet public expectations, implementing technology to protect constituent data, leveraging information to make data-driven decisions and migrating outdated on-premise systems to the cloud are crucial to an organization’s success. Through these types of digital services, entities can keep scale with future demand and be better positioned to rapidly respond to changing demands.

Five digital initiatives and technologies public sector organizations should invest in
1. Cybersecurity

The COVID-19 pandemic and current global events have increased the necessity for digital transformations, as well as the importance of cybersecurity. Ransomware attacks worldwide rose 105% in 2021 and many attacks included double and triple extortion tactics. Public sector organizations are often a target because bad actors believe public sector organizations may be unprepared and know they have a lot to lose if their systems go down – including loss of data, offline services and loss of trust with stakeholders.

Public sector organizations can expand their digital transformation goals by incorporating cybersecurity services and technology. Cybersecurity specialists can work with organizations to identify risk exposure and risk impact at each digital touchpoint of their transformation and collaborate with implementation specialists to identify and implement technologies that will increase an organization’s cybersecurity posture and reduce the chances of a successful cyber-attack.

Now more than ever, identifying and patching vulnerabilities, securing data and implementing incident detection and response systems is a top concern for public sector organizations. Our 10-page guide explores eight leading cybersecurity practices with critical steps to take and tips to incorporate in your approach. Learn more about how Baker Tilly helped a local government strengthen its IT department and managed the implementation of a statewide intrusion detection and prevention system for a state government.

2. Cloud technology

Of the emerging digital trends impacting the public sector, cloud technology is one of the most cost-effective transformations. Migrating data to the cloud can maximize the potential of an organization’s data to drive timely insights and effectively mitigate risks.

But the cloud is more than just data storage – it’s how your organization connects systems, builds new platforms and applications, accesses information and efficiently processes and scales data needs. Public sector organizations have successfully leveraged cloud-based systems to transform complex areas such as human resources via Human Capital Management platforms. Scalability, agility and robust security enable public sector organizations to reimagine constituent services by automating back-office solutions, reducing IT and operational expenses and leveraging data to enhance community and business interactions with the government. Learn more about what cloud transformation is, why it’s inevitable and how to get started with a cloud ideation lab.

3. AI/Automation

Artificial intelligence and intelligent automation are growing in popularity and importance throughout the public sector. The implementation of intelligent automation has been enabled by low-code technologies such as RPA (robotics process automation), which has been a fast-growing segment of the software sector for the past ten years. The two most common types of intelligent automation are: a) intelligent process automation and b) intelligent document processing. The former refers to automating any rules-based processes in the organization which are currently performed on a manual basis. The latter refers to automating the processing of physical and digital documents. In general, process or document automation can alleviate pain points across teams, departments, systems and organizations. Automation can help governments by automatically scanning and extracting data, entering the data into spreadsheets or other applications, distributing communications to constituents and identifying where exceptions exist that need to be reviewed by a human workforce.

The major benefits of implementing intelligent automation for public sector organizations extend beyond improvement of data quality and increased process efficiency to include:

  • Improved ability to attract and retain tech savvy talent
  • Automating mundane tasks will help boost employee morale
  • Allow community leaders to reallocate their team members’ time for more strategic initiatives
  • Dramatically improve all stakeholders’ satisfaction with the organization’s service
4. Omni-channel operations

By leveraging existing applications or by building custom applications, governments can provide constituents access to public services through a variety of self-serve channels to create a better user experience, consistent with the experiences they’re familiar with receiving from B2C companies in their day to day lives. With the omni-channel approach, all integrated systems can communicate with one another to execute workflows seamlessly, creating an improved and transparent end user experience that strengthens trust between the community and the organization.

5. Municipal portals

As the state and federal governments establish their parameters for legislation, state, county and local leaders can take action to apply for grants and leverage funds for their unique community needs. Municipal portals enable governments to build their funding and grant disbursement strategy by soliciting equitable responses from community leaders and accounting for interlocal collaboration opportunities.

The eligible expenses and investments are aggregated together in a highly organized and visual way, to incorporate data insights into a community’s strategic funding plan. That plan can then be shared with elected officials, department heads and community members. Municipal portals have enabled community leaders to account for more interlocal collaboration opportunities and more quickly determine funding needs. Learn about the ARP ACTion portal Baker Tilly built for state, county and local leaders for the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

While many governments have already begun their digital transformation journey, others are looking for help to get started. Understand how a cultivated and tactical digital plan enables your goals and better prepares you for digital transformation . Our digital strategy team can help guide your organization with a structured approach to enable organizational change, streamline operations, mitigate risk, improve constituent services and drive greater return from achieving your digital transformation goals.

We're here to help

Baker Tilly combines strategic industry knowledge and advanced technology experience that enables us to work with your organization across your digital government transformation needs. Contact us today to learn how Baker Tilly can help.

Seth Cooper
Director
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