“Roughly every 10 years for the last five decades, the federal government has had to deal with major crises ranging from economic to terrorist to pandemic. We now face the novel COVID-19 pandemic, and it has presented CIOs at all levels of government with unprecedented challenges to respond to the critical needs of the country.”
“Having worked in the Office of Management and Budget, as a congressional committee staff member and in industry during previous crises, I have noted a common three-phase cycle always happens, which I’ll refer to as the ‘three Rs’: Response, Recovery and Restructure…”
“Recovery and Restructure activities during the 21st century have increased major technology spending (33% after 9-11, about 10% after the housing crisis) before flattening. Recovery and Restructure phases from COVID-19 necessarily require increased technology spending and may even radically restructure the government.”
“With the Response-phase activities related to our current crisis underway, let’s focus on the Recovery Phase. Stated simply, the Recovery phase will be substantially more expensive and less effective if the government does not make a major investment in today’s digital government tools and techniques. In fact, with the massive volume of transactions and data generated in the COVID-19 response, CIOs will have to help agency leaders recognize the need for cloud computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence/machine learning to meet the historic challenges.”
“Here are four areas where the government must apply digital government tools…” Read the full article here.
Source: Why right now is the most challenging time in history for government CIOs – By Mark Forman, April 20, 2020. FCW.
