Interesting government technology and government resource planning news found by the FreeBalance Strategy & Innovation Group.
CLOUD BURDEN OF LEGACY ERP GOVERNMENT: Government use of ERP with heavy customization has creating significant problems to move to the cloud, reported Patrick Thibodeau in FCW. This is a significant IT concern given the high ERP failure rate in the public sector attributable to code customization. David Linthicum suggested in TechBeacon that “some applications can take a “lift and shift” path to the cloud, meaning that if code modifications are made, most will need to be significantly refactored to take advantage of cloud features.” Meanwhile, Shawn P. McCarthy at IDC identified the growing legacy expenditures in the US federal government and the lack of funding for shared services data centre consolidation. This comes at a time when US government IT leaders are looking for more sharing across government silos with “SuperClusters” , as reported by Zack Quaintance in Government Technology.
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT CLOUD SOVEREIGNTY? Not so fast, secret negotiations with Microsoft about Government of Canada data storage on foreign cloud was reported by Dean Beeby of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Beeby found, despite the Canadian Federal Government IT plan forbidding storing secret data outside of Canada, “Shared Services Canada and the Communications Security Establishment reviewed whether sensitive data about Canadians and other confidential matters could be securely encrypted on American ‘cloud’ services.”
MORE IT WOES IN THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA: In wake of problems with ERP pay system, shared services e-mail and web content management, Douglas Quan reported on delays in the Royal Canadian Mounted Policy criminal records digitization project in the National Post. Project problems means that full digitization is likely to be completed in 2020.
GOVERNMENT DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS ABOUT CHANGE MANAGEMENT: Nathan Eddy described a Gartner report about public sector CIOs and digital transformation in InformationWeek. The report recommends that government CIOs “should focus on creating a culture that is less averse to change and more unified in its vision and direction — one that can manage change more effectively over longer time frames.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GOVERNMENT: Ben Miller identified 26 AI in government use scenarios in Government Technology with an interesting infographic. There’s more to AI in government than chatbots.
