Technology is providing governments with new channels to engage with their constituents, to build capacity, and deliver services to their increasingly mobile workforce and population. Many are continuing with e-Government initiatives in order to become more constituent-centric. Shared services too are gathering momentum as a means of delivering bigger and better functions. However, with the low level of investment in BI, it is not clear how options for modernizations are evaluated and selected and progress against targets measured.
Business Intelligence software applications deliver corporate management and strategy support functionality that enable enterprises to collect and store large volumes of corporate data and then view this data in a form that can be used for business analysis and planning. BI can help government departments and other public-sector organizations make better informed decisions. Additionally BI solutions can ensure that the public sector meets its key performance indicators (KPIs), and manages its limited resources well.
Butler Group analyzed the results of a number of Datamonitor surveys carried out in 2006, to find that only one in five public sector organizations in the U.S. and Europe have already invested in BI, as opposed to two in five in the private sector (excluding small companies). Furthermore, only 15 percent of public-sector organizations plan to invest in BI in the next two years where as more than 28 percent of private-sector companies intend to do so. IT Security is the top priority area for the public sector with 40 percent planning to invest in it in the next two years. Other priorities for investment include IT framework, infrastructure and desktop management.
These findings show that the modernization effort is still mainly focused on getting the basics of IT right as opposed to more advanced deployments such as BI. However, BI is the cornerstone of decision making based on facts rather than perceptions.
Butler Group believes that the public sector is missing out on the benefits of BI and therefore is limiting its ability to pick and choose the best options for modernization. BI is an ideal tool not just for policy-level decision making but also for ensuring operational efficiencies, and performance improvements. These are after all the goals of government modernization. There is also much benefit to be gained from the process of implementing a strategic BI solution, which can help the public sector get rid of silos of operational information and achieve its objective of modernizing outdated working practices.
