How the public sector can harness emerging technologies

There has been a tremendous push among state agencies to modernize government services over the past few years. But IT leaders also need to prepare for the continuing rollout of emerging technology developments. Forward-thinking governments and organizations understand the technological forces surrounding them and look for ways to harness them for citizens’ and constituents’ benefit.

In a new StateScoop interview, Jennifer J. Walcott, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, discusses Deloitte’s GovTech Trends 2023 report and highlights what trends may be most relevant for the public sector and how they can take advantage of them.

“We talk about emerging technologies—AI, the metaverse, and what that means to the public sector and how CIOs and other business leaders can start thinking about that as they look towards the future for themselves,” she says.

Walcott also shares her insights on how agencies can maintain and build trust with today’s public in light of how diverse their technologies are.

“The heart of so much of what we’re asking of this community is grounded in equity. The mission that we’re all supporting is to get things out to the citizens—be of service to our citizens and our stakeholder community. So figuring out ways to use technology to achieve that outcome is important.”

She also stresses the importance of the workforce, saying, “think about the massive growth that we’re seeing in the need for cyber professionals as an example in public; how the public and CIOs choose to hire can advance our notions of equity, the ability to continue to recruit and train talent from a broad base of citizens, I think is a really important feature of how CIOs also can advance the role of equity and diversity in our government overall.”

The report spotlights the accelerating technology trends most likely to disrupt over the next 18–24 months. Read it here.

This video interview was produced by Scoop News Group and StateScoop and underwritten by Deloitte.