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Citizen digital identities and composable government enterprises are two major technology trends within governments that are expected to pave a way forward through the coronavirus pandemic in Australia.
This is according to analyst firm Gartner, which claims that the trends are directly linked to public administration and policy issues that government leaders need to address.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred the acceleration of digital innovation across the government sector around the world, presenting government leaders with new opportunities to use data and technologies to build trust, agility and resilience in public institutions,” said Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner.
“While pandemic-related challenges will continue for some time, technology trends have emerged that address critical challenges in areas such as security, cost containment and citizen experience.”
Citizen digital identity
Citizen digital identity is particularly relevant to Australian governments at every level, according to the firm’s senior director analyst Dean Lacheca.
“It’s on everyone's radar, but getting it right is vital for ongoing digital service delivery," he said. “To improve service delivery, they need to build on those identities through hyperconnected public services backed by data sharing programs and delivered through a multichannel citizen engagement strategy.”
The trend — the ability to prove an individual’s identity through government digital channels that are available to citizens — is being viewed as critical for inclusion and access to government services, according to Gartner, with the topic being high on political agendas.
Indeed, citizen digital identity has already picked up pace in Australia in recent years, with South Australia and New South Wales both rolling out digital driver’s licences.
Citizen digital identity is predicted to not stop at the state level either, as Gartner predicted that by 2024, a “true global, portable, decentralised identity standard” will be available in order to address business, personal, social and societal and identity-invisible use cases.
Composable government enterprise
Additionally, Lacheca highlighted composable government enterprises as the “most important future trend” in Australia for people tasked with building digital governments.
These enterprises, defined by the firm as a government organisation that adopts modular, or composable, design principles, enable the reusing of extended capabilities, as well as the continuous adaption to changing regulatory, legislative and public expectations.
“CIOs are embracing composable government to overcome existing, siloed approaches to managing services, systems and data that limit the ability of governments to adapt to the rapidly evolving needs of the emerging digital society," Gartner claimed.
The trend is expected to see widespread adoption, with the firm predicting that 50 per cent of technology companies that provide products and services to the government will offer packaged business capabilities to support composable applications by 2023.
Aside from citizen digital identity and composable government enterprise, the research firm flagged eight other global government tech trends to keep an eye on.
Accelerated legacy modernisation
One such trend is accelerated legacy modernisation, with governments being faced with decades-old legacy infrastructure and core systems.
While Gartner notes that this is not exactly a new issue, the pandemic has highlighted the need to modernise systems. As such, it predicted that by 2025, over 50 per cent of government agencies will have modernised critical core legacy applications.
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