For many years, government IT modernization has focused on the concept of being digital. With the rise of AI and new data integration capabilities, digital is no longer a qualifier for how government can best deliver services or meet mission requirements.

According to Accenture, digital is indeed still important, but is now simply the price of admission for doing business. In addition, as Gartner recently highlighted, digital administration in government has become normalized.

In order for government leaders to best embrace a post-digital world, there needs to be a complete shift in thinking – where the mission comes first, then the innovation second. The secondary innovation can cover a wide-range of capabilities, but the concept of data integration as a true mission-enabler keeps rising to the surface.

Gartner also recently highlighted how 75% of governments on a global scale will gauge digital transformation success by measuring the enduring mission impact.

Enduring mission impact is also a key focus on advancing customer experience in government. According to a recent McKinsey study, CX in government has improved since the Biden administration launched its 2021 CX executive order.

Towards the end of 2022, the Biden administration also launched its Fifth Open Government National Action Plan, which focuses on advancing a more inclusive, responsive and accountable government. The foundation for this action plan is increasing the public’s access to data to improve the delivery of government services and benefits.

With ongoing efforts to enhance CX, a more open government is a critical pathway to a post-digital world. These efforts are creating an environment of empathy for citizens and constituents where key insights will create optimal engagement.

It’s also not hard to ignore the potential impact artificial intelligence will have on government, especially for streamlining citizen and constituent engagement. A key pillar of bringing this to life is the ability to marry AI capabilities with all data sources and systems.

The post-digital world ecosystem

As Gartner highlighted, the post-digital government will be driven by ecosystems where shared platforms will offer access to various subsets of data that can be leveraged by multiple agencies for sharing resources to better meet constituent needs.

Overall, this means that government leaders need to think beyond innovation and focus exclusively on mission outcomes. This shared ecosystem model will be a critical component in bringing post-digital government to life.

Ubiquitous data integration and process mining

The post-digital government world will be backed by ubiquitous data integration. While the citizen or constituent will have a seamless front-end experience, autonomous data integration platforms will be working on the back-end creating easy connections and workflows that will be augmented by AI.

This rapid data integration capability will allow agencies to leverage consistent and more complete data across all systems for better meeting mission goals. In addition, it will be possible to create on-demand integrations, faster integration connectors, as well as take advantage of self-healing data mapping.

In addition, AI-enabled enterprise integration will further super charge existing government IT systems to better capitalize on past, present and future data, while also freeing up IT teams to focus on more strategic and mission-critical work.

Process mining will also allow agencies to leverage data from various IT systems for automatically creating a visual representation of all processes. This will help agencies to identify new efficiencies for optimizing overall processes for better meeting constituent needs. Process mining can also pinpoint bottlenecks, identify areas of inefficiency, and uncover automation opportunities.

Through these automation capabilities, agencies can enhance any kind of constituent-facing service, whether it be filing taxes, processing social security benefits, emergency response, public health monitoring or even implementing new smart city initiatives.

Setting up for future success

For more than 50 years, humanity has adapted to tremendous technological changes. From the rise of the internet to mobile devices to 2023 being the “year of AI,” technology is now a true extension of human capabilities and intelligence.

For government leaders, a mindset shift towards being post-digital will create more strategic opportunities for better meeting the mission. Having ubiquitous and autonomous data doing all of the work on the back-end, it will be easier to create individualized and on-demand services for addressing any constituent need.

In the end, government will be more seamless and optimized, and will be better poised to protect and serve citizens.

Hank Bailey is president and chairman of the board of Software AG Government Solutions.

Aaron Mazzatenta is vice president at Software AG Government Solutions.

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