Government agencies have been working on modernization for a long time, but it has been an ongoing challenge, because when systems are updated, they almost immediately become legacy.
Keeping up with evolving technologies and expectations has created a constant pressure on the public sector because businesses run very large, complicated, systems with limited resources to update them more frequently. However, in the past year, that has changed. In 2020, we saw many governments respond almost overnight to Covid-19 challenges, rolling out digital services for contact tracing, quarantine management, unemployment claims, and much more. Things that once took months or years were done in days or weeks. This rapid pace of innovation was enabled by digital cloud platforms—commercially delivered solutions providing secure, prebuilt components that are nimble enough to accommodate both private and public sector needs. The primary benefit for government agencies is that these platforms allow them to participate in an ecosystem that is regularly updated and constantly evolving to keep pace.