Governments make slow progress with digital transformation initiatives

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By Anthony Spadafora
published

Digital initiatives may be a priority but actually implementing them is proving difficult

(Image credit: Image Credit: Wichy / Shutterstock)

Despite the fact that digital business initiatives are high on government agendas, a new survey from Gartner has revealed that governments' ability to scale these initiatives is increasingly slowly and their progress lags behind that of other industries.

The research firm surveyed 372 digital decision makers from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, India and Singapore across six industries (financial services, government, manufacturing, retail, healthcare and education) to compile its digital business survey.

According to Gartner, half of the government respondents to the survey are looking to digital government to support a combination of transformation and optimisation goals. However, the other half is focusing on a single goal with 33 per cent prioritising optimisation while 17 per cent are making transformation their primary focus.

Stages of digital transformation

The firm believes the road to digital transformation is made up of five stages: desire, designing, delivering, scaling and harvesting.

Research director at Gartner, Dean Lacheca provided further insight on which stage governments believe to be on, saying:

“Ninety-one per cent of government respondents consider themselves at one of the first three stages, which focus on the development and introduction of new services. Only 9 per cent identify their digital initiatives as being in the later stages, where the focus is on scaling the service and exceeding the value of comparable nondigital initiatives.” 

Ecosystems are also playing a large part in helping government organisations scale their digital business. Collaboration with partners such as employees, citizens, consumers, startups, digital giants and service providers was also found to play a major role in scaling the benefits of digital government.

Gartner's survey shows that government respondents already use a range of business ecosystems with over half saying they use third-part developers to deliver value to citizens.

Anthony Spadafora
Anthony Spadafora

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.