Governments across Asia are turning to data to help manage the impact of COVID-19, from contact tracing to managing safe distancing. With more countries looking to reopen their borders and ramp up economic activity, the need for fast, accurate analytics is critical for delivering timely, and reliable insights to inform policy making.
But beyond the pandemic, the role of data analytics will only grow with governments’ ambitions to deliver more efficient and accessible public services for citizens in line with the emergence of technologies such as 5G. How can public sector CIOs design a data architecture that is optimised to deliver intelligent, yet highly personalized services at scale to support a highly digitalised, resilient society?
FutureCIO spoke to Sunil Chavan, vice president, FlashBlade for Asia Pacific and Japan from Pure Storage, on how data use is evolving in what is clearly a trend: data-driven government or public sector.
A Gartner 2020 survey noted that 80% of government organisations are still at the initial or developing digital maturity stages. The analyst acknowledges that while government CIOs see the value of digital government transformation and the need for agencies to be agile and innovative to succeed, they will struggle to be responsive and successful in completing digital initiatives.
Chavan noted that while initiatives to digitize can date back to as far as 20 years ago, many government processes remain paper based. “Unless you have your base fundamentals ready in terms of moving from paper to digitisation with the proper process in place, you can't just get rid of all your paper, and move towards a complete digital format. It's a humongous task, and it's probably not commercially feasible to do that,” he opined.
Still, he acknowledged that things may be progressing with digital optimisation being about moving away from traditional paper forms and making data digitally available.
Click on the podchat player above to listen to Chavan share his perspectives on the following:
- What exactly is digital transformation, as viewed in the government sector?
- Gartner says digital transformation is difficult to achieve in the government sector. What is your view on this?
- Do you see a trend towards what Gartner refers to as data-driven governments in Asia?
- Has COVID-19 altered government efforts to modernise or transform?
- How are governments in Asia fairing in terms of their adoption of analytics and AI?
- What is your advice to government CIOs on the topic of digital transformation, modernisation and data-driven government?
