IDC Government Congress

Countries in the Middle East region are reimagining their digital governments and aiming to deliver trusted, personalized, and seamless experiences to citizens and enterprises alike. New agile policies and digital services are expected to empower individuals, create widespread equity and opportunities, spearhead development of the economy, and deliver excellent social and policy results. However, such new outcomes and value creation pursuits are not without regulatory, cybersecurity, procurement, and redundancy risks.

Instead of stitching together separate and often siloed digital projects as part of a digital response and/or initiative, CIOs and program/LOB executives can assemble a network of digital partners that continuously work toward meeting the goals of the initiative. Each partner in this network can contribute unique talent, technology knowhow, digital capabilities, and other assets, while at the same time obtaining some benefit or value in return. The vision and goals of the initiative, alongside architectures, policies, and other artifacts, can collectively guide partner actions and deliverables to ensure consistency and interoperability while boosting innovation and flexibility.

Alongside technology, the presence of qualified human resources is essential to the Future of Work. Staffing shortages and a lack of skills in key areas such as cybersecurity, acquisition management, and data science not only affect individual agencies but also cut across the entire national government workforce. How can governments use AI-enabled talent acquisition software to streamline or automate parts of the recruiting workflow — particularly repetitive, high-volume tasks?

Over the past 10 years, governments worldwide have adopted all types of cloud computing deployment models, from public clouds to on-premises private clouds. This incremental adoption of cloud often results in complex, hybrid multi-cloud environments that have multiple challenges. These challenges include the need to support open standards, enable the portability of workloads and interoperability of data, and consistently implement trusted security and data protection policies. How can governments utilize platform-as-a-service tools and practices — such as containerization and DevOps — that improve their ability to develop, deploy, and orchestrate services across multiple environments in an agile manner?

Throughout the last year, digital innovations in areas such as banking and retail have surged, providing citizens with unrestricted access to services in the process. The need for digital healthcare and education services will also rise as citizens struggle to cope with the fallout from the pandemic. In this context, how are healthcare and education agencies utilizing digital technology to provide widespread services, and what is the future of education and healthcare in the new reality?