On the one hand there is a wave of consolidation throughout the region as unsustainable legacy infrastructure is phased out. As a new free FutureGov Report - ‘Asian Government ICT Project Priorities 2014’ - indicates, IT departments are taking the time to review their strategic use of ICT, opening up new opportunities for vendors.
At the same time, a number of new technologies are intersecting to fundamentally change the capabilities, roles and responsibilities of public sector ICT.
(Now’s a good time to take a deep breath)
Cloud computing is providing the inexpensive, scalable capacity to process and store ever larger amounts of information being generated by increasingly pervasive remote sensors which are part of an expanding ‘internet of everything’ fuelled by Machine to Machine (M2M) communication which is being leveraged by Big Data solutions to understand and manage heightened levels of complexity in public sector planning and policymaking.
These tectonic shifts in the ICT landscape create tremendous opportunities for government agencies to change the way they provide services to citizens, businesses and civil servants themselves - but all of this is playing out against a backdrop of the consumerisation of ICT within the enterprise. These are challenging times for government IT departments. Although public sector CIOs in the region are typically resisting the trend towards BYOD, it is happening anyway.
The world of ICT is becoming much more complex, with big changes to the external ICT environment and the needs of users are changing at a faster rate. As a result expect increased emphasis on agile software development, where agencies break down larger ICT projects into their constituent elements with a view to delivering services faster, and with less risk. The alternative is to be overwhelmed by the growing complexity of the ICT environment.
As Singapore’s GCIO, James Kang, said earlier this year: “We can no longer wait nine months or more for the delivery of projects, the world is moving too fast. There has been a tendency for agencies to list their maximal requirements, including things they did not need. This can lead to very complex programmes where the risk and magnitude of failure increases. What we want to move towards is a more disciplined approach, where the most important functions are prioritised and the emphasis is on going live as quickly as possible.”
All of which goes to underline that, for government departments, it is not business as usual. We are going through a period of acute stress - so expect the incidence of project failures to increase, as as mentioned in last week’s blog, expect government departments to enter in to much more collaborative working relationships with their ICT suppliers.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): James Smith
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 27.11.2013
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