Agencies Lag Behind on the Immersive Internet
Deloitte identified “immersive virtual experiences” as a tech trend, referring to the move toward more experiences in virtual reality (VR), mixed reality and augmented reality, creating ways for people to connect with each other in digital worlds. Deloitte gave the government a score of 1 on readiness to adopt such technologies. (The scoring scale runs from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest score.)
Agencies may not yet be in a position to adopt these technologies, but there are opportunities to support constituents and employees. The report provides examples: Virtual office visits could let constituents meet more easily with government employees, which could be helpful for people with disabilities or time and transportation constraints. VR could also provide immersive training to help government employees react safely and effectively to high-pressure situations in the real world.
EXPLORE: How government initiatives are driving digital transformation.
Agencies Must Prepare for Decentralization and Modernization
On decentralized architecture, Deloitte rated the government’s readiness a 2. Decentralized, blockchain-powered ecosystems are key to building digital trust, which is the measure of a user’s confidence in an organization to create secure digital environments.
As blockchain adoption increases, Deloitte notes that there is an opportunity for agencies to use blockchain-powered solutions to enable, re-engineer and automate processes with other organizations. As regulators, agencies can provide policy and regulatory clarity to support national innovation.
Deloitte also gave agencies a score of 2 on mainframe modernization. This refers to modernizing existing legacy IT systems (like mainframes) to fit today’s tech landscape, as opposed to completely replacing core systems. Organizations are using mainframes to drive digital transformation so they can take advantage of the trusted functionality of legacy systems and the capabilities of emerging technologies.