Bringing Tech Advances from Commercial to Public Sector
By Paul do Forno, Managing Director, Deloitte
In my career with Deloitte, I’ve had the opportunity to work with private sector, consumer-focused companies, as well as State of Ohio agencies in developing strategy and implementing technology solutions to better serve customers and residents. Though the private sector has historically led innovation development — I’ve seen it up close — that doesn’t mean governments are being left behind.
In fact, governments today are taking cues from the private sector in modernizing and advancing digital services. Much like consumer-focused companies, by vastly improving the digital user experience and introducing advanced e-commerce capabilities, governments are beginning to give residents a much better customer experience across their web and mobile solutions. The State of Ohio, for instance, modelled private-sector best practice when it introduced a single sign-on solution called OH|ID, a cloud-based identity management platform that allows citizens to access and interact with multiple state agencies.
Next up? I see the technology and government industries now coalescing to enable government to be a “fast follow” in adopting an innovative tech solution — SaaS based, composable architectures and micro services. These new breakthroughs deliver all of the tools that make it easy to deliver a great user experience with companies online and can now be utilized to make a big impact on how governments serve residents.
The historic approach
Anyone with a bit of experience in government understands how, historically, agencies haven’t typically taken a customer-centric approach in developing websites and applications. Part of the issue is that older technologies didn’t provide great user interfaces and provided little integration or standardization, and governments were then stuck with tech that didn’t always play well with others, even as more apps and services were implemented. That made for clunky website development and customer interactions. Today, however, government agencies can find ways to take a customer-centric approach that provides a better user experience across multiple devices and multiple agencies.
A new cutting-edge component based best of breed option
Software, applications, and services have been moving away from large siloed applications for a couple decades, and today component based, microservices, cloud-based apps and composable architecture allows organizations to take a new, affordable, and flexible approach to delivering customer services. This means that companies and government agencies can now choose the best individual software apps and tools to meet a particular need on the front end — the websites where customers and residents interact — while utilizing a back-end, cloud-based infrastructure that stitches these solutions together for easier management, integration and better customer delivery.
In this environment, every component such as content management, digital asset management, security, etc. — is pluggable, replaceable, and adaptable to the needs of the enterprise and customer. Software vendors, startups and cloud providers are driving this transformation with many of their own breakthroughs, every year driving down computing and infrastructure costs while allowing for rapid innovation and new cloud-native applications. Meanwhile, the not-for-profit MACH Alliance is bringing together traditional competitors in the software, infrastructure, and cloud spaces to unite behind standards and give companies the ability to build on trustworthy innovations more rapidly. And according to the MACH Alliance, 79% of enterprises are jumping to a composable architecture in the delivery of digital services and operations.
In fact, many of Deloitte’s large commercial clients are building upon this composable application architecture. One hotel chain we’re working with utilizes these advances to allow for a better customer experience using cutting-edge apps and tools for their booking app, loyalty program and more. Our team recently rebuilt an e-commerce web and mobile app for an athletic fashion retailer to better handle peak sales demand when the latest and greatest shoes are released, giving customers known as “sneakerheads” real-time purchasing access.
For the government sector, these tools can help residents discover fun places to visit in Ohio or even find a new career path. Customer-focused transactional apps make everything easier for residents, from updating driver’s or professional licenses, to monitoring and applying for state benefits.
While government has historically lagged the private sector some seven to 10 years in tech adoption, the rapid maturation of microservices and composable architecture can allow government agencies to jump on board so much faster. The State of Ohio is one of the leading states starting to push these architectural principles, and we are helping them on this journey, especially in the web digital experience space. And I believe Deloitte is in a strong position to help lead this shift in the government space. In addition to our membership and active involvement with the MACH Alliance, we also have the unique ability to bring commercial practitioners and expertise in software architecture over to serve government clients, here in Ohio and beyond.
Capabilities are advancing quickly, and governments are taking notice of their private sector brethren, because this plug-and-play approach has the potential to provide an affordable, agile, and advanced solution to serving constituents and maximizing impact.