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5 Tech Transformations to Watch in the Public Sector in 2023

Lingering changes from the pandemic. Economic headwinds. Ever-increasing constituent demands. Here are the major trends David Knox with Oracle sees driving government technology work in 2023.

Digital data flow on road with motion blur to create vision of fast speed transfer . Concept of future digital transformation , disruptive innovation and agile business methodology .
After two years in which government agencies were forced to quickly transform their operations to meet constituent demands during the pandemic, 2022 saw a slowing in that sense of urgency. Coming out of the pandemic, the desire to make rapid change has slowed considerably — understandable, given the immediate pressure isn’t there anymore.

However, the risks of failing to keep up with constituent expectations haven’t changed. Their demands for fast, accurate service across any channel of their choice will continue to increase. Agencies must continue to innovate to ensure best use of taxpayer dollars to provide the best mission outcomes possible.

The hot inflection points today span from applied AI/ML to new approaches for re-skilling and best deploying the workforce to new partnerships in the public and private sectors. Here are some trends to watch as the public sector’s transformation continues in 2023.

  • Multi-cloud will become the architecture of choice with expanding fit-for-purpose adoption. Agencies have become hyper-focused on having multiple platforms that are easy to integrate and share data without performance loss. Multi-cloud platforms that are secure, simple to use and keep integration tight will become the top choice for all public-sector agencies.
  • Public/private technology partnerships will grow. As customers push government agencies to manage and connect disparate platforms, the public sector is leaning more on the industry to help simplify the complexity of technology — especially cloud computing. The result will be an expanded number of partnerships between government agencies and private-sector companies.
  • Data as a service will rise in popularity as the new viewpoint of data. Data continues to be the No. 1 element used to inform key decision-makers about what has happened, what is happening, what should happen, what could happen and what the outcome will be. The focus has shifted away from data formats and data volumes to data value. A focus on data as a service speaks concisely to the value of data which can be realized when it is available and consumed in the “as-a-service” paradigm.
  • A focus on upskilling and reskilling the workforce. As they shift to hybrid and cloud architecture, government agencies will need to be able to attract and retain new employees with the necessary skill sets to work with these new technologies. Because they won’t be able to hire enough workers — thanks in part to economic conditions — leaders will need to focus on retraining a portion of their workforce to be more savvy in operating cloud architectures.
  • A mindset shift among government technology workers. Adoption of cloud architecture requires human workers to relinquish a certain amount of control — which is hard to do. However, as more agencies adopt cloud technology, we will see more workers relinquish that control, and in turn undergo training on new skills that will enable them to do more interesting, creative work and help the organization operate more efficiently.

In the age of cloud computing, technology is playing a major role in empowering governments to be the data-driven organizations they aspire to be. And while the pressures of the pandemic have eased, that does not mean the urgency for government agencies to modernize has reduced. Constituent demands and expectations continue to evolve and rise, and those pressures will not go away. As we start a new year, agencies must continue to think about how technology can help them evolve and modernize.