50% government IT workers to occupy roles by 2023 that don’t exist now: Report

Mumbai, March 6 (IANS) As transition to digital governance gains momentum globally, over half of government IT workers by 2023 will occupy roles that don't exist today, a report said on Wednesday.

The Gartner CIO survey found that 53 percent of digital initiatives in government organisations have moved from the design stage to early stages of delivering digitally-driven outcomes -- up from 40 per cent last year.

Additionally, 39 per cent of governments expect Cloud services to be a technology area where they will spend the greatest amount of new or additional funding in 2019.

"These findings demonstrate that leadership has become more comfortable with cloud delivery models and has moved away from concerns regarding security and data ownership," said Cathleen Blanton, Research Vice President at Gartner.

Gartner predicts that by 2023, over 80 per cent of new technology solutions adopted by governments will be delivered and supported using an anything-as-a-service (XaaS) model.

XaaS contains several categories of IT, including managed desktop, help desk and network services, voice over IP and unified communications.

"The model offers an alternative to legacy infrastructure modernisation and investment," said Alia Mendonsa, senior director analyst at Gartner.

The move to digital business also means that the IT organisation needs to adapt to new skills requirements.

"In many governments, roles of chief data officers and cloud architects are already present. However, it is worth noting that 38 per cent of government respondents did not introduce any new roles in 2018 due to insufficient resources, skills and cultural issues," noted Blanton.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies advance, machine trainers, conversational specialists and automation experts will slowly but certainly replace experts in legacy technologies, the report added.