Our latestGovTech Solutions Series paper, which takes a deeper look at the first principle of creating a truly smart community, “digitizing all data,” is available today.
Principle One: Digitizing All Data
A community must digitize all the data they have and will have and combine them into a standard data set. That means data from legacy systems cannot be left behind.
Several challenges face today’s government technology professional tasked with a data migration and digitization exercise including:
· Most state and local governments are working with legacy systems that hold valuable data.
· Those governments are also working with multiple “smokestacks” of technology that may or may not communicate with each other.
· The increasing growth of data available to governments further challenges govIT professionals.
While there is a cost to governments in harnessing, migrating, and standardizing the data they currently have, the benefits outweigh those costs:
· A common data set removes duplication of effort between departments and functions inside the same government.
· Accessing and then using both historic and “new” data gives greater insight into trends which can help with future planning.
· The more accessible and useful a government’s data set is, the more it can be relied on to make strategic decisions about growth.
Today’s government CIO will need leadership ability, a talented team (especially professionals with data analysis and management skills), and resources to manage a successful migration and digitization exercise.
The paperalso looks at two scenarios where government use of a common data set can increase the efficiency of operations and therefore help attract growth to a community.
In future papers, we’ll be examining the other three principles of building a truly “smart” community. The GovTech Solutions Series tackles topics important to government technology professionals as they seek to build safe and prosperous communities — if there is a topic you would like to see covered, please let us know!