According to the recently conducted Gartner CIO survey, 50% of government IT workers will occupy roles that do not exist today. In fact, by 2023, half of the jobs that will exist have not yet been “invented.” Thus, this report corroborates that the public sector is moving towards digital transformation, as it also shows that 53% of digital initiatives in government organizations have moved from the design stage to the early stages of delivering results, a figure higher than the 40% determined last year.
For CIOs in government, digital initiatives are among their top priorities, so much so that 39% of governments expect cloud services to be the technology area in which they will spend the most new or additional funding in 2019.
The shift to digital business means that the IT organization will need to adapt to new skills requirements, and to accommodate these it will need to initiate a transformation process that results in new or modified roles. For example, as cloud services become more commonplace, the number of data center management roles will decrease. In tandem, the emergence of digital product management is changing the way governments think about their services, leading to the emergence of digital teams to design and deliver products.
IT will therefore take on more diverse tasks, with aspects such as inclusion, citizen experience and digital ethics being considered. These fields will require new types of profiles, such as researchers, social scientists and designers. As artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies advance, new roles will emerge that will replace jobs tied to outdated tools.
On the other hand, Gartner also predicts that by 2023, the majority of new technology solutions for government will be delivered and supported using a XaaS (X as a Service) model. Indeed, more than 80% of new technology solutions will be delivered using this system, which includes cloud, network, workplace or unified communications services. However, XaaS will also create new challenges for government CIOs. In the early stages of adoption, business units will rely less on the IT department to deliver solutions, as they will now be able to acquire these solutions without IT involvement or resources.
