*By Marcio Santana
The digitization of the public sector is a theme that was accelerated at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and has become a journey that must be maintained in public organizations, especially in the race to meet the needs of citizens, as well as operate more efficiently.
In this scenario, public sector IT leaders must recognize that telecommunications services, for example, are capable of reducing infrastructure investments, promoting productivity, shorter response time to certain demands, as well as reducing operating costs.
With an eye on this trend and betting on digital, we can list different demands that should be considered as objectives in strategic planning. The focus is on seeking to increase the quality of government services, actually delivering value to citizens with services that impact their lives.
1.Health, education and justice – Considered priority topics on the public agenda, government CIOs will need to invest in IT infrastructure, mainly in solutions as a service, delivered in the cloud, to increase the services most requested by the population, as well as increase the storage capacity of information with more security.
Telemedicine, promoted by the digital format, provides services more quickly because it accelerates the arrival of care in places that would require high investments in infrastructure. The model promotes cost reduction and takes specialized labor to different locations.
The digitization of schools will have a positive impact on the training of young people, acculturating this model from an early age and providing much more up-to-date learning methods than traditional ones.
On the other hand, the justice system still suffers from endless piles of cases waiting for judgment or processing. Despite the continuous effort of the judiciary to improve digitization, there are still opportunities in this segment for the adoption of new technologies that further reduce bureaucracy in the entire process.
2. Relationship with the citizen – we know that customer service in the public sector is a highly critical service, which is why adherence to innovations, such as ChatGPT, is one of the priority trends on the agendas of CIOs. The use of AI at higher levels will bring significant changes to the public sector, making it more intelligent, digital and assertive in decision-making.
One of the criteria that improve the relationship with the population is also the transparency in communication, which is provided by digital services. Once connected, people have open access to information and actions carried out by public management.
3. Mobility and user experience – thinking about the digital journey without considering the user experience in terms of mobility is having a strategy that will certainly fail. Adopting an approach that embraces mobility, mobile-first, is undoubtedly the main condition that will improve the delivery of services to the population. For this, connectivity initiatives, which we call digital paving, are essential to enable and better experience technologies.
4. Security – given the growing digitization, in the same proportion, hacker attacks on IT infrastructures evolve, malicious activities that often make already established digital public services unavailable, in addition to leaking citizens’ data. To deliver more cybersecurity, government leaders must invest in awareness programs as well as systems, practices, and teams that elevate threat responses. The human factor, in this case, is essential, to increase and deepen the internal experience and to support employees with awareness.
5.Compliance – this is not a digital trend, but it is a process that also aims to improve public reputation among citizens. Inspired by private initiative, public management has been adhering to the implementation of compliance programs to ensure that the organization complies with internal rules and regulations and is able to prevent and identify irregularities, in addition to punishing those responsible for acts. Adopting compliance is the most efficient strategy to protect assets and maintain a healthy public image.
When the pandemic began, public management had to start modernizing its legacy systems. Three years after the event, we see that the digital journey is in progress and there is still much to be done. This is because, at every moment, new services are requested by the population, as well as new threats affect businesses globally. The important thing is that the public administration starts to adopt in its planning the citizen's needs in the first place!
*Marcio Santana is Vice President of Public Sector at SONDA Brasil
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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