The global COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for city governments to accelerate their digital transformation strategies by embracing data, technology, and analytics. Below, Spectrum Smart Cities, details how city leaders can tackle their transformation by establishing the foundation required to expand their digital services.

Gartner Key Findings

• “By 2023, over 60% of governments will have tripled citizen digital services, but less than 25% will be integrated across organizational silos."
• "The pandemic forced governments to accelerate the implementation of digital services; yet much of the increased volume lacked digital maturity and created instant legacy and duplicative architectures."
• "The pandemic has highlighted the need for evidence-based decision making and the use of advanced modeling techniques to address complex situations."
• "Remote work has long been part of many government organizations’ business continuity programs. COVID-19 accelerated this move to remote work at a much greater breadth and scale than anticipated.”

What This Means for Communities

Given budget constraints within most government entities, city leaders will be looking for platforms that are relatively flexible and can address multiple use cases. Focusing on the end-to-end journey, rather than point solutions, will allow city leaders to ensure a more efficient and seamless experience for their constituents when it comes to public service, while allowing for cities to quickly respond to the unexpected.

Per Gartner, “These point solutions are unlikely to yield the range of benefits found within platform solutions. This leaves additional room for improvement and the expansion of government digital services with low digital maturity.”

By establishing a proper smart city infrastructure, city leaders can build the foundation necessary to ensure maximum flexibility by breaking down organizational silos and transforming how they integrate and deliver public services.