The Five Biggest Tech Trends Transforming Government In 2022 – Forbes

Governments and public authorities are no more immune to disruption from the advance of technology than any other part of society. Many of the challenges facing public bodies today stem from the fight to tackle the global Covid-19 pandemic. Often , government institutions found that by adopting similar tactics plus strategies to industry and the private sector, they too could learn to become more flexible and agile in their response.

This has meant that they also have experienced an accelerated rate associated with digital transformation. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and digital twins are now firmly on the agenda of governments and general public bodies, whereas previously, they might just have been on the roadmap. Many government authorities, particularly in more developed nations, have discovered they simply can’t afford to be complacent when there is the chance in order to drive so much positive change.

So with that in mind, here’s my rundown of some associated with the biggest and most important tech trends that are affecting governments in 2022.

Digital Identity

Proving who you are – or who someone else is – is an increasingly vital ability for individuals plus governments in the digital age. Many governments have developed centralized systems for checking criminal records as well because verifying the particular rights of access to state support such as healthcare and benefits. Other government authorities have taken it further by implementing compulsory or voluntary national identity cards. Additionally , identity schemes may or might not include biometric measures, like fingerprints, linking an individual as a physical entity to their digital identity since conclusively as is currently possible.

Privacy as well as the level associated with state control that the population is happy to accept over their own lives is, of course, an issue central to the concept of country wide digital identification. Some of the most forward-looking initiatives today are focused on decentralized identity, which uses blockchain and distributed ledger technology to create identity databases that will are controlled by algorithms rather compared to institutions. Pilot projects involving decentralized identification built upon Microsoft platforms are taking place in the UK, Tokyo, and Belgium. In addition , the EU has stated that blockchain technology should play the part within “enhancing” the European electronic identity framework.

AI and Automation of Public Services

Chatbots are one example of an AI-powered application that we will see more of in 2022 as governments and authorities look for ways to automate public services. In the US, federal, state, plus local authorities are all stepping up experiments in the use of natural language processing (NLP) technologies to reduce customer friction. In particular, these people have been widely used with services that received large volumes associated with calls during the outbreak. In the particular Republic of Ireland, the Office of the Revenue Commissioners created a good AI-powered virtual agent that offers 24/7 help for citizens struggling to complete their tax returns. AI-powered “cobots” will furthermore increasingly be used simply by human open public service workers and civil servants, for example , by augmenting their ability to find information, automating repetitive tasks like form-filling, or even maintaining national records archives and community databases. Governments clearly have to give some different considerations to the particular applications of AI compared to those by companies – given the compulsory and sometimes essential nature from the solutions they provide. But once residents become comfortable that AI-powered assistants, chatbots and cobots are capable of saving them time, we will undoubtedly see them rolled out in many some other public service functions, just as we are increasingly seeing it within the private sector. In fact, Gartner analysts have forecast that 75% of government authorities will have at least three enterprise-wide automation initiatives underway by 2024.

Cyber Security

With state-on-state cyberattacks increasing in line with the growth in criminal cyber-attacks, security will be high on the particular agenda when it comes to state technological priorities. The Solar Winds/ Nobelum attacks of late 2020 serve as a good example, where attacks widely believed to have been backed by Russian state agencies simultaneously hit around 18, 000 targets, including US federal companies. The highly sophisticated attack was aimed at exposing data by exploiting flaws in commonly-used software. When the attack was discovered, it was found that will hackers may have had the ability to monitor the activity of authorities email accounts for months. Similarly, an attack by Chinese hacking group Hafnium that accessed 250, 000 email accounts around the globe was also declared to have already been state-sponsored.

Even before this, cybersecurity has been widely seen as a defense priority. In 2021, the US government announced that it would provide assistance to businesses along with defending themselves from assault by nation-states. The visible element associated with this strategy can be observed in attempts to expose and publicize these attacks inside order to educate the public on the threat and the methods of defense that are available. Other governments responded simply by enhancing their particular own cyber defense capabilities, such as the UK Government , which formed the UNITED KINGDOM Cyber Security Council. This trend will certainly undoubtedly continue throughout 2022 as state-sponsored attacks intended to disrupt commercial activity, supply chains, plus infrastructure continue to pose the threat.

National Cryptocurrencies

Not every country is likely to follow in the footstep associated with El Salvador and adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in 2022. But we are going to certainly always see a growth within governments looking to integrate cryptocurrencies with their central banking systems.

More countries are expected to go down the route of creating their own digital currencies. These have the advantages that they will still be under the control of the issuing governments while offering many of the infrastructural advantages of existing cryptocurrencies, such while not requiring bank accounts in order to store all of them or payment tools to spend them. The US , UK, China, Singapore, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Estonia, Tunisia, and Ecuador are all known in order to be in varying stages of investigating or applying national electronic currencies using blockchain technologies.

The obvious advantages that will cryptocurrency as a monetary system offers are usually clearly enough to get governments plus central banks interested, but there are questions that need to be answered – specifically around the particular environmental cost and energy use – that may possess political consequences. This means condition cryptocurrency is usually likely in order to become an increasingly hot topic as we move through 2022 and beyond.

The particular Rise associated with Govtech Startups

Of course, federal government organizations themselves are not always renowned with regard to their agility and innovation when it comes to developing new technology. It has left the field open for a new breed of startup referred to as “govtechs” to bring new thinking to the challenge of driving the particular digital revolution in public bodies. Accenture estimates that this market for providing these solutions is worth close to $400 billion per year, therefore there’s ample incentive in order to get involved. Many take their cue from consumer technology innovators or disruptors in additional verticals this kind of as fintech by applying similar solutions – AI, IoT, cloud, edge computing, super-fast networks to govt and public body difficulties. Technology investor PUBLIC estimations that there are about 2, 000 govtech startups in Europe alone, mainly focused in the UNITED KINGDOM, France, plus Germany. With government adoption of technology clearly having the potential to affect many associated with our lives, it’s as exciting to see that innovation is mainly because rife here as it is in more traditionally lucrative fields such because finance technologies (fintech) and marketing technology (martech). Hopefully, this will lead to an end to situations such since the one identified by a UK government report within 2020 that found the country was likely to spend up to £22 billion maintaining support regarding obsolete techniques.

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