The same lessons that drive governments to roll out DX initiatives and campaigns are setting the tone for their peoples’ transformation
Today, as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the lessons we have learned have set the foundation for leaders to drive government digitalization as a priority.
Public sector organizations are looking ahead and seizing opportunities to drive digital transformation (DX) to deliver modernized citizen services faster, to meet the new citizen demands.
According to a Gartner survey, digitally advanced government organizations can reap more benefits from higher efficiency, cost reductions, greater workforce productivity, compliance, and transparency.
These digitally advanced government organizations are also able to scale their digital initiatives effectively and implement them across their organizations. Many are also implementing cloud-first policies to use commercial cloud services, or defining national roadmaps for the modernization of their IT services and systems.
The governments’ move to the cloud empowers them to fulfil their roles in improving engagement, education, national development and citizen services. When needed, they can scale services to meet spikes in demand, wind-down operations to reduce costs, and innovate using the latest cloud technology.
DX in government
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit India, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) developed a teleconsultation platform in 19 days, so that patients could seek medical support virtually from their homes. C-DAC also leveraged the cloud to scale the service quickly to serve 17,000 patients a day across 28 states.
In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics scaled its digital service on the public cloud to serve ran national Census 2021 forms to over 2.5m people in a 24-hour period without a glitch. The bureau was able to receive 142 online submissions per second at the campaign’s peak, while blocking out traffic from more than 130,000 malicious IP addresses during the Census.
In Singapore, a six-month pilot is being run to deploy cloud computing for managing sustainability solutions in municipal estate management, to support the country’s 2040 targets for net zero carbon emissions.
Also, as the digitalization momentum accelerates, governments across APJ will be prioritizing digital skills training for their workforces, in order to unlock the full potential of cloud computing. Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea will need to train an estimated 86m more workers in digital skills collectively over the next year to keep pace with technological advancements—equivalent to around 14% of their current total workforce, with three of the five most-demanded digital skills by 2025 being cloud-related, according to some studies.
More public-private partnerships needed
As societies and communities across APJ continue to evolve, organizations of all kinds—from governments, industries to nonprofits—will need to come together to solve some of the biggest issues we are facing, from addressing urgent climate change remediation to helping marginalized communities.
While APJ as a region can expect new challenges to come their way, one thing is certain—public and private sector organizations will need to work more closely than ever before to find new ways of addressing evolving citizen demands and expectations.
As governments in the region ramp up the momentum of digitalization momentum, they can use various services and initiatives of cloud service providers as a platform for public and private sector organizations to collaborate to solve challenges and test new ideas.
Looking ahead, to close skills gaps and create the conditions for digitalization success, governments, educators, and industries across APJ will need to collaborate more closely than ever to give all individuals—regardless of their background, education, or social status—the opportunity to build and deepen their digital skills now and into the future.
