Government CIOs rate digital transformation its top priority in 2018. To make this happen, new spending in the cloud, analytics, and cybersecurity rank highest in new spending for government technology budgets in the new year.
A recent Gartner survey of 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries across major industries, including 461 government CIOs, outlined the top priorities and budget items in 2018. Highest on the lists for government spending were Cloud services, cybersecurity, and analytics.
The survey uncovered not only what government CIOs will be spending their budgets on in 2018, but also which technologies they see as top priorities for achieving their organizations’ mission.
Among business priorities: digital transformation was ranked number one among government CIOs with 18% of respondents saying it was their first priority. Agencies dealing with defense and intelligence disagreed, with only 6% listing it as the top business priority.
Among private sector businesses, digital transformation received 17% of the ranking, below growth/market share.
Business priorities aside, the actual technologies these agencies depend on to achieve their business goals vary slightly from where actual spending is taking place. One technology in particular that falls in line as both a top priority and a top new budget item is the cloud.
Cloud Services Ranked Highest Technology
At the top of the list of top technologies in the new year for government CIOs is Cloud services and solutions. This sentiment is bolstered by recent initiatives pushing governments to utilize more cloud-based resources.
Among these is an order directly from the White House ordering Federal agencies to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing tools in 2018.
“Many government CIOs are rebalancing capital expenditure and operating expenditure spending patterns to reduce technical debt, while making the strategic shift to cloud,” said Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner. “They should consider cloud as the means to accelerate the digitalisation of their organisations and enable the business optimisation that results.”
19% of government CIO respondents listed Cloud services and solutions as both a top tech and as a new spending item. This indicates that government agencies at federal, state, and municipal levels will be spending more of their new budget funds on the cloud in 2018.
Cloud services/solutions and infrastructure/data center combined was ranked in the top 10 by 30% of government CIOs, compared with only 12 percent in all other industries.
Other Top New Spending Items
One of the notable takeaways from this survey is the contrast between what CIOs see as a top technology and where new budgetary spending is being allocated.
For example, cybersecurity is slated to receive new spending by 17% of government CIOs surveyed. However, only 5% of these respondents listed security and risk as a top-10 priority.
Third on the list of new tech spending is business intelligence and analytics. 16% of government CIOs surveyed said they plan to increase spending in this area in 2018. 18% of those responding said that business intelligence is among their top priorities.
Absent from the list of new spending, but high on the list of top tech to win, are customer relationship management and mobility.
Artificial intelligence, a top 10 technology area in the private sector, doesn’t even rank in the top 15 for government CIOs. It was listed as the 19th priority. Likewise, the Internet of Things does appear anywhere in the top 10 list for government CIOs.
The Internet of Things includes a wide range of technologies that connect individual sensors and other devices to the Internet. It’s a core technology behind larger initiatives including smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and other initiatives bridging modern technology with existing infrastructure.
