How Can Government Modernize from a World of Legacy IT Systems?

Governments today increasingly face the challenge of how to integrate transformational digital technologies like artificial intelligence, while maintaining or modernizing legacy infrastructure and applications.  This challenge is compounded when officials seek to create value for the public from digital modernization when those technologies have evolved via different strategies, including “waterfall” approaches that often take longer to implement than “agile” approaches.

How best to engage in digital modernization in a multi-layered computing environment is the subject of a new report from the IBM Center, Digital Modernization for Government: An Implementation Framework, by Gregory Dawson with Arizona State University, James Denford with the Royal Military College of Canada, and Kevin Desouza and Marc Picavet with Queensland University of Technology in Australia. 

This report leverages interviews with government leaders, existing case studies, and prior research to create an evidence-based framework for digital modernization.  This framework can help government leaders address key issues in government modernization through practical steps forward involving technologies like AI, workforce skills, contracting reform, and agility. The framework offers a set of actionable steps and considerations in these areas as well as leadership and data management to enable successful forward progress.

The framework can help government leaders to innovate by harmonizing across multiple computing environments and transformation strategies, increasing effectiveness and efficiency to improve results for the public.

This report builds on multiple prior IBM Center reports by the authors that have helped government leaders to achieve success in technology implementation, including Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector: A Maturity Model and A Roadmap for IT Modernization in Government.  The report also contributes new research around agile government, adding to the content accessible to government leaders and stakeholders though the Agile Government Center (led by the National Academy of Public Administration in collaboration with the IBM Center).