For many jurisdictions, moving citizen services online was a long-term, “nice-to-have” project, but the pandemic forced new ways to bring city hall to the people, rather than the people to city hall. So much of American life was pushed out of physical spaces and onto the Internet this year, including the vast majority of local […]
A tongue-in-cheek question that has been doing the rounds on social media – “Who led the digital transformation of your company? A) the CEO; B) the CTO; or C) COVID-19” – could equally be applied to the public sector, according to city Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and Chief Data/Digital Officers (CDOs) […]
The response from governments around the world to the threat of COVID-19 has been one of the biggest public service challenges in decades. The use of digital tools has played a key role in protecting citizens, with governments having to turn quickly deploy welfare systems, distribute information, and scale up contact tracing. The British government’s […]
Earlier this year, Norton Bonaparte predicted a permanent end to a foundational element of how government leaders and employees engage with constituents. “I talked to a newspaper reporter in March, and I said ‘I don’t think I’ll ever shake your hand again,’” says Bonaparte, city manager of Sanford, Fla. “People talk about going back to […]
State and local government leaders should lean on advances to cloud made during the pandemic to accelerate digital services that will provide additional benefits in a post-pandemic world, Okta’s Kelsey Nelson says. “Many of the IT leaders we talked to within state and local agencies had been starting along a lot of these modernization paths […]
Either by necessity, design, or other reasons, the COVID-19 crisis challenged cities to work smarter, and in many cases, become more resilient. The changes brought by the pandemic have been as small as getting rid of the old timeclock in the public works department in Spokane, Wash. — it encouraged too much close gathering — […]
The bill for private consultants hired by the government to help combat the coronavirus pandemic has climbed to £175m, as the chair of an influential parliamentary committee revealed that MPs would investigate the multimillion-pound use of management consultancies. The government has bought consulting services from almost 90 different companies as it scrambled to fill gaps […]
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, federal government employees across the country had to make dramatic changes to the way they operate. The country’s largest workforce shifted toward telework, and citizen services moved to being digital-first or in many cases, digital-only experiences. Government digital service delivery, while ramping up before the pandemic, has […]
The U.S. government is awash in more official forms than any organization in the history of civilization. A review of the websites where the Department of Defense and the General Services Administration keep official form libraries suggests there are well over 10,000 forms poised for download. With this staggering volume of forms, one might imagine […]
Denmark leads in the United Nations’ E-Government survey 2020, according to the embassy of Denmark in Myanmar’s announcement on 14 August 2020. The E-Government survey by the United Nations’ Department and Economy and Social Affairs ranked 193 countries in terms of digital government readiness and implementation has given Denmark the highest score for the second […]