At Least 85% of Governments Without a Total Experience Strategy by 2023, Will Fail to Transform Services, says Gartner

By 2023, at least 85% of governments without a total experience (TX) strategy will fail to successfully transform government services, according to Gartner, Inc. Governments that continue to focus on citizen and employee experience initiatives separately will miss out on essential synergies to effectively transform their services.

“Over the past two years, most governments increased their investments in digital initiatives to respond to pandemic-induced operations disruptions. However, many digital initiatives are still occurring in silos,” said Apeksha Kaushik, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Governments must move from a siloed approach to a cohesive strategy encompassing employee experience and citizen experiences across multiple platforms, channels, and technologies in the most intuitive user experience. This can drive digital adoption, improve outcomes and mitigate the effects of underwhelming service experience which can otherwise lead to a failure of government’s digital transformation initiatives.”

A TX approach combines the disciplines of user experience (UX), citizen experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and multiexperience (MX) into one holistic approach toward service design and delivery. A TX strategy ensures that resources across CX, EX, UX and MX disciplines collaborate to uncover new opportunities for improved service delivery that increases both citizen and employee satisfaction and improves the government’s mission outcomes.

“Government CIOs need to prioritize investments in capabilities that can be leveraged by both employees and citizens. For example, using “voice of the citizen” and “voice of the employee” input to identify common pain points and, therefore, potential to refine the experiences for both through one initiative. CIOs need to focus on supporting effortless experience across multiple touchpoints by linking datasets as digital solutions can help employees be more citizen-centric and improve overall governance,” said Kaushik.

Increased Reliance on Hyperautomation

Investments in emerging technologies potentially offer a huge opportunity for the government’s operational transformation and widen the vast arena of opportunities to impact public services. Gartner predicts that 75% of governments will have at least three enterprisewide hyperautomation initiatives launched or underway by 2024. In particular, benefits such as improved business agility and improved employee productivity gained over the last two years from remote access and automation of tasks will advance this strategy.

“Government CIOs can help sustain hyperautomation initiatives with a “whole of government” and composable business principles by engaging business and IT stakeholders,” said Irma Fabular, research vice president at Gartner. “Ongoing execution includes iterating on business and IT automation needs, based on human-centered needs that encompass TX.”

Decision Intelligence will Gain More Importance in Government Organizations

The continuing deployment of automation, pressure on remote decision making, dealing with backlogs of work, and the need for speed and accuracy all require decision support at the first point of interaction. Gartner predicts that by 2024, at least 60% of government artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics investments will directly impact real-time operational decisions and outcomes. Recovery of economies and services from the backlog of the past two years requires accelerating decisions and improving first-time accuracy: This requires the flexibility and speed of operational analytics.

Accurate and highly contextualized decisions are gaining more importance as global economies are challenged with unprecedented complexities and uncertainty. Building data fabric within government organizations will gain vital importance. As the need for contactless governance increases, governments will advance capabilities in natural language processing and machine learning to be embedded in mainstream products, making them available at scale across the organization.

The number of business scenarios available for better decision making will grow strongly because of greater adoption of technologies such as augmented analytics, simulation and AI.

Gartner clients can read more in the report "Predicts 2022: Governments Scaling Gains From Disruption"