Jane Edwards
A new Accenture report says 66 percent of technology leaders in public service agencies said they are willing to adopt public-private partnerships and new commercial frameworks to facilitate the delivery of services to citizens.
Accenture said Thursday the Emerging Technologies in Public Service report is based on an online survey of 774 public service professionals across nine countries in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America and explores the adoption of emerging tech platforms across social security, health, law enforcement, border services, revenue and administrative government agencies.
Those technologies include analytics, biometrics, intelligent process automation, internet of things, predictive modeling, natural language processing and machine learning platforms.
The report found that 76 percent of respondents said their agencies take note of private sector’s technology implementations to guide their execution of public service collaborations.
“Lessons from the private sector and from other agencies can uncover ways to side-step barriers and effect change,†said Terry Hemken, head of Accenture’s health and public service analytics insights for government business.
Nearly 70 percent of tech professionals said organizations in the private sector have helped their agencies meet citizens’ needs and 60 percent of public service leaders surveyed said they partner with citizens and volunteer groups to facilitate implementation of emerging tech initiatives.
The study also found a gap between problems that agencies aim to address through emerging tech investments and challenges that public service professionals said they think citizens want to be addressed.
Some of the service challenges that citizens want agencies to resolve based on public tech leaders’ responses include family security and safety, lack of training and education as well as complexity of regulations.
