Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with a journalist who was doing a piece about applying the open-source community "philosophy" to policy making. As many open-source software communities are able to self-manage and still deliver remarkably high-quality and complex products by applying something that looks like a democratic approach, the idea of using a similar approach to create policies and laws is intriguing.

Finding better ways to more directly engage citizens in policy making has been among the objectives of e-government programs for a long time. However, beyond a few experiments concerning e-consultation and the establishments of blogs and similar mechanism to gather constituents' inputs, very little has been done. While many may think this is due to the natural risk-averse attitude of governments, the reality is more complex. The way policies are established in most countries is through a complex process of internal and external consultation that engages governments, parliaments and a number of organizations representing different constituencies: political parties, unions, industry associations, consumer association, and so forth. An alternative process, based on direct engagement of individuals in some sort of policy-making community, raises a fundamental question about how it would relate to those representative organizations. What would the relative weights be? Would those organizations become irrelevant? What models would emerge to ensure that fairness and transparency is part of the process?

On the other hand, a community approach may be useful to improve internal and external collaboration among the current actors in the process. Rather than starting from a draft text that goes through a time-consuming consultation process involving different ministries and parliamentary commissions, a policy may be constructed with a "wiki" approach, with different departments contributing to different parts of the policy, using a consensus-building process following the same model as the one used in open-source communities. Although less visible and not as likely to attract media attention, such an approach could be extremely beneficial as a way to streamline policy making. Should this prove useful to support internal policy-making collaboration, it could be gradually extended to support collaboration with external representative organizations and — even further — to engage individuals.

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In light of the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech University, many college and universities are re-evaluating their mass notification technologies and procedures, as well as and associated campus security. Colleges and universities should form review teams composed of interested stakeholders to examine current methods on how best to communicate, not only with individuals, but also with individual campus buildings during emergencies. The Virginia Tech tragedy illustrates that different levels of emergency require different levels of notification. For example, a hostage situation in one campus building (indoor) in a distributed environment might require an interactive voice response technology to alert neighboring buildings and a cellular broadcast to all individuals (indoor and outdoor) to remain where they are or return to a specific location for further information. A multitude of technologies and systems are available for colleges and universities to implement mass notification systems. These technologies use various mediums, such as FM radio waves, interactive voice response systems, sirens equipped with audio messages, and hosted, multichannel systems (such as PDA and e-mail). College and university administrators must consider a layered approach that does not rely exclusively on a single technology or system.

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We have been publishing the Hype Cycle for Government during the last three years. This report used to include a selection of the most relevant technologies that affect clients in government in all geographies and most domains. However, the selection has always been a difficult one, since technologies tend to have a greater impact in certain sectors than in others. Good examples are case management — which is key in human services or justice but somewhat less crucial in other sectors — or certain metadata models, such as XBRL, with a great potential limited to a specific domain. Since the Hype Cycle shows to what extent technologies are mature and ready to deliver measurable benefits, another issue is that the same technology may have a different degree of maturity in different domains.

In 2007, we have decided to change the focus of our Hype Cycle, and address technologies that play a strong potential or actual role in supporting, enabling, driving and sustaining government transformation. Transformation refers to constituent service delivery as well as to internal business processes. We will concentrate on technologies that have a whole-of-government transformation potential as well as relevance in most if not all government domains.

We will complement our Hype Cycle with other models that highlight how and how rapidly these technologies contribute to creating public value.

We welcome thoughts and suggestions by our readers about which technologies they believe are key to transformation.

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During a recent client inquiry, I had an opportunity to discuss in a client inquiry what governments around the world are doing with wikis.

It goes without saying that blogs and wikis have been among the most widely debated subjects around Web 2.0, as they provide new ways to support internal collaboration and constituent engagements.

Wikis certainly have promise when it comes to internal collaboration. There are already numerous examples, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is using a wikito coordinate its content development project, or Alaska's Department of Social Assistance, which has used wikis for more than a year to support collaboration and share best practices among local councils. In the intelligence community, Intellipedia has been widely publicized as a tool to improve collaboration between different agencies and to automate information collation.

Another area where the value of wikis has been discussed is public safety. The lack of coordination in preparing for Hurricane Katrina the inefficiency of relief efforts have raised the profile of wikis in the area of homeland security and public safety. My colleague Jeff Vining is about to produce research on this topic.

Both the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and its U.K. counterpart are considering a wiki approach to the patent-approval process.

Another area for wiki use is to support policy making and consultation. In this respect, last year U.K. Environment Secretary David Miliband started a wiki to develop an "environmental contract" with help from constituents. This wiki was soon targeted by people who provided fake inputs. Legislative branches of governments have started wikis to structure and support bills. A recent example is Utah's association with Politicopia. Client conversations and analysis so far show that the risks outweigh the benefits for governments venturing into external wikis, while internal use — limited to well-defined purposes and relatively controlled constituencies — can be beneficial as a collaboration tool. Areas where we expect a rapid development is support to the internal policy-making process (for example, to streamline interagency consultation) and as a means to improve knowledge management across agencies that share common goals — public safety, intelligence and justice) are good examples.

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In May 2005, President Bush signed into law the Real ID Act , establishing minimum standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards (DL/ID).On 1 March 2007, The U.S.Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed regulations and standards for states to meet the requirements of the REAL ID Act, including security features for DL/IDs, as well as the verification of identity and lawful status. States currently do not engage in state-to-state mandated exchanges to prohibit individuals from possessing multiple DL/IDs, and no system exists to check the status of cardholders from other states. As a result, the Real ID Act will now require building new systems. As a result, a more complex and time-consuming application issuance process will evolve, resulting in additional costs for the states and their citizens.

The DHS proposal recognizes the federal government will not own or manage any of the data systems used for interstate records checking. However, the individual states will continue to have the option to access federal systems to aid in the identity verification process. For example, a majority of states already query federal databases either directly or indirectly through a portal provided by the American Automobile Motor Vehicle Association, such as the Social Security Online Verification and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system. However, no state-to-state mandated exchnage database currently exists. Thua, compliance is academic. Some systems appear to be working, while others are not. For example, verification of the lawful status of students seems not yet adequate; a connection between the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System is anticipated but not yet in place. In addition, states cannot verify principal residence accurately or verify passports or consular reports of birth abroad. In the absence of further congressional action, individual states will have to agree voluntarily to a workable application on controlling personally identifiable information. However, in the future, states will be required to independently verify all data fields printed on a DL/ID, such as full legal name, date of birth, gender,facial digital photograph and a driver's history (violations, suspensions and points). If a citizen is surrendering a DL/ID from another state, it is relatively simple to access that state's records; however, accessing records in more than 50 jurisdictions is not so simple. To do so will overwhelm existing networks. As a result, we believe national adoption will be slow in coming. States should carefully consider a governance architecture to accomplish this requirement to verify all data fields on a DL/ID. We offer some suggestions:


• States should use existing data exchanges that are focused on commercial driver's licensing and noncommercial license holders, such as the Commercial Driver's License Information System and the National Driver Register Problem Driver Pointer SystemThese systems collect limited information from each state to match against incoming inquiries.


• States should use commercial data brokers to verify various types of information on behalf of the issuing entity. Such a solution will require cooperation by numerous entitles


• States should use existing systems to recognize by automated means documents that are valid. This does notnecessarily mean verification, but more of a authentication approach that recognizes counterfeit or altered documents.

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At our Symposium in San Francisco in April, we’re doing a presentation called "Radical Government: Managing Innovation Can Turn the Scapegoat Into the Hero." This presentation came about because, more than any other position in government, it is likely to be the CIO who introduces innovation into government, and the one most likely to be the scapegoat when a project fails. Most government agencies and their related processes have existed for generations. IT has come along and automated many of the processes in recent years. But, the capability of technology to truly transform how government delivers its information and services has barely been touched. As IT vendors and IT leaders introduce new technologies, clever people in government can find ways to put them to good use. However, unless these transformative projects are led by the program leaders and senior executives within government — those with the authority, ability and aptitude to lead their agencies through the organizational and cultural changes that will be necessary for success — the project will fail, no matter how good the technology or the CIO. To avoid becoming the scapegoat for these failures, CIOs must recognize the components of the organization, its processes, and it stakeholders that are affected by a project, and make certain that before signing up for a new initiative, those who own those components are playing the leadership role that is required.

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I had the pleasure to moderate a panel hosted by the city of Barcelona on the topic, "America, Asia and Europe: Comparing Strategies for Transforming Government." Panelists were from the European Commission, the University of Hull in the U.K., the city of Buenos Aires and Microsoft. Each presentation gave a different regional spin and a unique perspective (political, academic, user, vendor), offering a good mix of information for an audience that was primarily composed of European city IT managers — policy makers as well as technologists.

Two themes emerged from the discussion. The first one was that there is no single recipe that can be used across different geographies to ensure technology's impact on government transformation and better service delivery. The second one was how the value of e-government should be articulated, looking at a variety of drivers and impact areas. It was particularly interesting to observe how changing political and economic conditions in a city or region can turn the e-government approach on its head, from pursuing efficiency to creating and preserving jobs. By and large, most of the points discussed by the panel and raised by the audience during the Q&A session were the same we have heard during the past several years concerning the critical success factors and risk areas of e-government: strong political will, the need to make e-government an integral (or even better, a functional) part of the overall government strategy, and the struggle to organize effective and sustainable interagency governance mechanisms.

Most experiences seem to confirm that, despite increasing globalization, e-government must be addressed at the local level. Different jurisdictions have different political priorities, and technology investment plans must be tailored to meet each individual environment, rather than mimic what has been successful elsewhere.

In this respect, valuable good-practice initiatives led by the European Commission must do a better job in spelling out which practices are appropriate for specific conditions.

Technology vendors must increase their efforts to align their offerings to specific priorities rather than adopting instantly reusable frameworks and solutions: This has certainly improved the past few years, but not enough. As a consequence, several users start looking for alternatives (such as open-source or community-source solutions) that they feel can be more easily tailored to specific needs and over which they can retain a greater degree of control.

Last, but not least, technology decision makers in government organizations must become more fluent in articulating and prioritizing their technology priorities against strategic and political objectives.

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The Government 2020 blog has been a useful means to engage our clients as well as other interested parties in a dialogue about how technology will shape the future of government. Now, almost one year into our blog, we feel the need to engage them on a broader set of topics, and let both them and the Gartner analyst community to discuss the role of technology in government outside the boundaries of our 2020 scenarios.

Government IT organizations face numerous technology investment decisions today that will have a short- and long-term impact on government operations and service delivery, as well as on political issues. Some of the most widely discussed (and hyped) technologies today are creating both opportunities and challenges to traditionally risk-averse government organizations. xamples include Web 2.0, the impact of consumer devices in the enterprise, the advent of digital natives as citizens and government employees, the new social interaction and business models pioneered by virtual world, the virtualization of infrastructure, the blossoming of open and community source, and many others.

As we all know, government is an inherently complex sector, covering a diversity of domains, tiers and geographies. However one common thread that can be found in almost any single government agency is the struggle to innovate. Of course, there are different drivers for innovation: a visionary leader, the need to make a quantum leap in efficiency, and an overwhelming demand for better services by citizens. Technology is perceived as an enabler for innovation, but government organizations are more constrained in its adoption by regulations, procedures and — above all — accountability issue that often delay technology adoption or fail to realize the innovation potential.
We look forward to hosting a debate about technologies, projects, experiences, future or futuristic scenarios that show in concrete terms how technology can really change the way governments operate.

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During the Gartner Research offsite last week, a group of analysts discussed the topic of what Web 2.0 will mean for governments and the public sector in general. While there is no single Gartner definition of Web 2.0 (see "Web 2.0: Structuring the Discussion"), it can be looked at from three different viewpoints: as 1) a set of technologies with 2) community and social dimensions that enable 3) new business models.

From a technology standpoint, Web 2.0 implies the development of the Web-oriented architecture (a subset of service-oriented architecture; SOA), which provides a globally linked, decentralized model that is network-centric (vs. device-centric) and extensible. Relevant technologies here include Ajax, Web services, plain old XML (POX) and representational state transfer (REST). From a government perspective, one interesting spin is the impact that these next-generation application programming interfaces will have on government interoperability standards: The use of REST and POX leads to the development of more-generic, more-reusable services (that is, components), moving the complexity from code into data. Today's government interoperability frameworks have been developed with Web 1.0 in mind, and the way SOA is being deployed tends to favor the development of large numbers of relatively specific services with rich and complex interfaces that have a lower reuse potential.

From the community and social perspective, technologies like blogs, wikis, user-defined content tagging and others will clearly change the way constituents interact with governments. The most frequently used example is participation in policymaking, where community blogs or even policy wikis could be used to more directly engage people in proposing and shaping policies and laws. However, while these new forms of constituent participation and quasi-direct democracy will take a relatively long time to have a real impact (as they may require constitutional changes), there are areas where their impact can be felt quite rapidly. Today, customers' ratings play a major role in influencing online buying behaviors. Equally, citizens and other constituents could use ratings as well as blogs to provide feedback on service levels and even influence their design. In cases where online intermediaries compete to deliver online government services, constituent feedback can be a powerful influencer and actually shape this market. However, all this will be influenced by social and political factors

This leads to the business dimension. The use of mashups to achieve finer-grained integration between government and private-sector services and data can give rise to completely new services. Examples include the integration of location-based services with land, building or vehicle registers to streamline revenue collection, incident reporting and human service delivery; integration of financial management applications with tax e-filing and payment; integration of online travel services with immigration, revenue and health systems to provide clients with a seamless travel booking experience; and so on. The breadth and depth of integration will be influenced by several market, regulatory and political factors.

Scenario planning can be very useful in understanding how deeply Web 2.0 will impact government. We discussed whether the same axis used for Government 2020 (that is, citizen attitude toward privacy and government intervention in the economy) would be appropriate. While they certainly remain candidates and one can see quite easily how our four existing scenarios would lead to interesting conclusions, we felt that it may be more appropriate to 1) ask ourselves a more-specific question than just "how will Web 2.0 impact government?", 2) establish a list of driving forces that shape the answer to that question and 3) make sure that we can draw conclusions that are relevant in different timeframes, since Web 2.0 is going to have both a medium- and a long-term impact on government.

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I found an interesting news about what would be the first fully digital city, currently under development in South Korea at Songdo City. According to news reports, houses will be fully wired, wireless access will be ubiquitous, citizens will have a single access card for all sorts of services, and radio frequency identification will be used quite extensively.

Looking at the report, this suggests an early realization of one of our Government 2020 scenarios, the Good "Big Brother". Of course, how "good" this particular Big Brother will be is open to speculation: As always, ubiquitous access, location based services and a single identification scheme give rise to all sorts of debates about the possible invasion of privacy.

Besides the peculiarities of this particular case, reading the article raised a question about what governments around the world are doing with their earlier digital city projects. In the early days of e-government and the digital society, several local governments around the world took action to subsidize the development of broadband infrastructure, disseminate information kiosks, issue citizen cards, and so forth. There is no direct evidence that government investments in digital infrastructure of this sort always influence the scope and speed of Internet adoption.

Today, there are many discussions about whether local governments should play an active role in building or funding a wireless infrastructure. Besides the technical uncertainties (for example, should they venture into WiMAX?), the real issues are defining the extent that government action can be subsidiary to well-founded private-sector investments, as well as determining the relationship between government-funded infrastructure and private-sector content. After all, wasn't this a question that policymakers should have asked themselves a decade ago when they decided to invest in fixed broadband infrastructure? What is different today?

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In early November, the U.S. Congress approved the Conference Report for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill. This bill decreases the total funding for three major state and local law enforcement assistance programs: the State Homeland Security Grant program (SHSG), the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program (LETPP) and the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI). For example, SHSG's funding is down 4.5%; LETPP's is down 6.5% and UASI will be awarded $770 million - slightly more than the fiscal year 2006 level of $765 million. Combined, these three primary assistance programs will receive $45 million less than the year before, continuing the downward trend of the past several years. These funding levels represent a reduction of nearly 45% from three years ago. In addition, this bill overhauls the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to make it a more-independent agency within the DHS organizational framework by handing control of both disaster response and emergency preparedness back to FEMA, which had been removed from FEMA as part of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's Second Stage Review. This bill also directs SHSG, LETPP and possibly UASI funding to be administered by FEMA - not DHS. Gartner will follow this legislation and the resulting changes within DHS. We will publish several notes on FEMA's new control over federal assistance grants by FEMA to provide actionable advice for state and local law enforcement clients on how to best position themselves for this change.

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One topic we did not touch during our Government 2020 analysis is how consumerization will impact each of the scenarios. By 2020, consumerization will be a well-established reality, and seamless integration between professional and consumer devices will need to take place - although at different speeds in different scenarios. Moreover, the impact of consumer devices carried by government employees will be different in each scenario.
In the Good "Big Brother" scenario, government is likely to retain strong control over the devices that employees will use in the workplace, and will regulate their characteristics and uses of these devices to be compatible with job functions. In some instances, government regulations will affect the consumer market itself, by setting requirements (in terms of safety, location services, accessibility and so forth) for marketing these devices within the jurisdiction. Therefore, although consumerization will demand for greater flexibility in IT infrastructure management, it will not have a disruptive effect.

In Governing Phantoms, employees will be wary of using personal devices for their work, as this may enable government to exercise greater, undesired control over employees' leisure activities. However, it is likely that devices available in 2020 will support a fine-grained control of multiple professional and personal spaces, providing reasonable assurance that users can retain control and protect their privacy. The challenge for government - not dissimilar from what happens today in the workplace - will be to ensure that employees perform their duties. This will require the deployment of tools to evaluate individual performances, as well as spot possible illegal activities.

Personal devices will be the norm in both Status Quo Development and Free-Enterprise Government, where government organizations will give employees much more freedom in choosing devices, provided these devices meet the conditions of specific policies. Especially in Free-Enterprise Government, where a substantial number of services will be delivered by private-sector providers and intermediaries and their employees, infrastructure will have to be sufficiently flexible and secure to accommodate a great diversity of devices.

The bottom line is that, regardless of which scenario will unfold, government organizations will not be able to retain complete control of the devices that their employees will carry into the workplace.

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In May 2005, President George W. Bush signed into law the Real ID Act, which is a unfunded federal directive that mandates the states to take steps to prevent illegal aliens and potential terrorists from obtaining driver's licenses. As currently written, the states have until May 2008 to require documentation that goes beyond what most states currently ask license applicants to produce, such as photo identity, breeder documentation, proof of Social Security number and documentation of an applicant's name and address of primary residence. In addition, the act also requires each state to develop tamper-proof, machine-readable licenses manufactured in secure areas by security-cleared personnel.

The Real ID Act will require states to run cross-checks against other state motor vehicle departments (DMVs) prevent no forum shopping; this will require additional resources and personnel to secure the license-making process. The law also requires federal agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, to develop standards for machine-readable and tamper-resistant cards. Currently, these standards are still in the development process, leaving many state DMVs in limbo with their legislatures regarding the extent of budget requests. For example, several state DMV directors have made budget requests that cite potential expenditures if and when standards are established. The Real ID Act will affect more than 240 million driver's licenses, yet with the compliance date less than two years away, technical standards are still not ready. Some states are upgrading their DMV systems in the hope that they will be compatible with the future requirements of the Real ID Act. In addition, states need federal guidance to avoid compatibility challenges, if not the result will be 50 incompatible systems. In the coming months, Gartner will publish research on this topic to advise DMV administrators.

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I had a very interesting discussion with a client from a Canadian federal agency after the Government 2020 session in Orlando. He challenged our position concerning the relevance of a single government-managed identification scheme to support authentication needs related to information access and service delivery. In our scenario analysis, only in the Good "Big Brother" scenario does government succeed in promoting a single identification and authentication scheme (such as a smart card or a token) for any type of interaction with citizens. In all other scenarios, there will be proliferation of identification schemes, with some issued by the public sector and others coming from government clusters such as social security and healthcare.

A look at some of the early smart ID card programs in countries such as Finland, Belgium and Italy shows that the move toward a single scheme has lost momentum. It is clear that requirements vary for different categories of services and t the way in which private and public service and channels will interact and integrate in the future will play a great role in who will manage identity credentials.
However, our client made an excellent point about who ultimately will be responsible for resolving identity issues in cases of fraud or other criminal activities. This leads to further reflection: If identity management became somewhat "deregulated," what would the government's role be? Will new regulations emerge that cover the federation of identities, as well as the right and the ability of individuals to possess multiple identities? What will be the role of technology to support regulatory compliance, and how will that affect data protection and privacy rights?

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An interesting question asked at our Government 2020 session in Orlando concerned the sort of workforce that government will need in the future. There are trends that clearly apply to any of our Government 2020 scenarios: Examples include the retirement of baby boomers or the clash between "digital natives" (the current generation of teenagers that has grown up immersed in technology) and "digital immigrants" (most of the current workers who are adapting to new technologies but whose education and development has not been heavily influenced by technology).
However, the type of workforce required will differ according to scenario (see Government in 2020: Taking the Long View"). In "Status Quo Development" and "Free-Enterprise Government", workers will have to be mostly engaged in policymaking, compliance and oversight activities. Most of the skills required in service delivery or citizen relationship management will be left to intermediaries and external service providers, with relatively few exceptions. In Good "Big Brother," service delivery will be greatly automated and self-service will become a primary channel, which will require fewer skills in service delivery and relationship management. Only in Governing Phantoms will government require a broad variety of skills, from policymaking to operations.

An interesting picture emerges when trends such as retirement and generational change are matched against the various scenarios. In Governing Phantoms, organizational boundaries and processes do not change much: There are still silos dealing with different aspects of citizen service and data. Information will not flow without friction, which will create issues for workers who are digital natives. Although they understand the value of citizen privacy, they are bothered by the arcane processes and boundaries that are still in place. Turnover is high, as there are limited opportunities to innovate. In Good "Big Brother," the workplace is more exciting: Technology skills and the ability to leverage those skills to drive service improvement and transformation will be rewarded. In the remaining scenarios, deeper and richer relationships with a broad variety of intermediaries and service providers will be essential.

The bottom line is that, despite the generational change, what makes a civil servant successful will remain a mix of interpersonal and process skills. Will digital natives possess more or less of these skills?

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On Tuesday, 10 October, I will present "Government in 2020: Shaping Tomorrow's Legacy" at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando. This presentation puts Government 2020 in context by emphasizing how most systems and applications that government agencies use today — which often support mission-critical systems — were conceived, developed and deployed more than 15 years ago, and sometimes are as old as 30 years. Therefore, investment decisions that are being made today will shape the legacy systems of tomorrow. I had a preliminary discussion about this topic with some of our clients in Canada, and we agreed that government agencies do very little to consider the long-term impact of those decisions. One of the observations made was that technology changes at a much faster pace today. However, public procurement processes are likely to remain cumbersome and slow for a long time, which means that the replacement of systems may not be able to keep pace with these changes. At the same time, today's investments in "services" (from a service-oriented-architecture perspective) are meant to last longer, as they include provisions for reusability. Therefore I can't see a reason why we should not have legacy systems developed today that can operate well beyond 2020.

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In developing our Government 2020 scenario we selected the degree of government intervention in the economy as one of the relevant and uncertain driving forces that will shape our four scenarios. Recent events (such as in France and Italy) show that the question of whether government should keep its hand off the so-called "infrastructural sectors" such as telecommunications, railways and energy is often independent of the government "color." Looking back on recent history, although significant privatizations and liberalizations have taken place, they have not proceeded at the same speed in different parts of the world. So while there might be uncertainty about the speed and extent of deregulation, it may be unlikely that even in 15 years the attitude of certain countries toward retaining government control of key infrastructures will change. Does this make our selection of this particular axis less relevant in certain geographies? We assumed that both axes would be the most appropriate for developing geographical scenarios, but the degree of uncertainty in one may be less than what is needed to develop fully independent, relevant scenarios. It will be interesting to explore this in one of our upcoming scenarios for the European Union.

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Please take a look at the piece of research we just published on local government in 2020. Here are a few highlights for those who cannot access it (nonclients).

Local government CIOs planning a three- to five-year IT strategy should consider which of the investments they are planning will still be in operation between 2015 and 2020, and how this "future legacy" plays against each scenario.
• Caution is in order for investments in enterprise applications and CRM. While they can deliver value, they may become expensive leaacy during the next 10 to 15 years, unless agility and adaptability are built into those investments from the outset. Looking at shared-service arrangements with other authorities will minimize the risk that this will happen.
• Investments in business intelligence will maintain their value regardless of the future scenario, as the need for local-government-specific data analysis will increase rather than decrease over time.

Local government CIOs should be more discriminating about their main application architecture choices, and not overrely on their vendor in this space.

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One of the aspects of Gartner Government 2020 scenarios that bothers most of our clients is the prediction that government portals will become irrelevant in three out of the four scenarios (except for the Good 'Big Brother' one). Several years ago, we predicted that, by the end of 2006, the majority of e-government services would be intermediated rather than go through portals, and the reality is that they are still accessed through individual agency sites and portals (or intermediaries), rather than through whole-of-government ones.

In recent conversation on Government 2020 with clients in Southeast Asia, the issue has come up again. Invariably, every single country, state, region and county has deployed or is deploying its portal with the noble intent of providing a more citizen-centric view. However, citizen-centricity has little to do with government departments and tiers. The organization of government is not driven by citizen convenience, but by constitution and regulation, to ensure accountability of the public service against policy lines. Portals are a way to overcome this, but the case for governments to succeed in deploying portals that would become popular among users remains weak.

The point is not whether strategies should be put in place to make portals more palatable and successfully compete with other channels controlled by banks, mobile operators, MSN, Google and the like, because this may succeed only in a scenario where government retains very strong control of channels. Governments should shift their focus toward understanding what they need to do to make sure that those alternative channels can access government services and information in a way to deliver good service levels to citizens. This implies the move from "government interoperability frameworks" to "global interoperability frameworks," to pursue the adoption of standards that comply with those use by other sectors, and to establish pilots with private-sector concerns where the electronic delivery of bundled private-public services is tried out.

An interesting aspect is how, when we talk about intermediaries and external service providers, the majority of clients think external suppliers (primarily IT) provide services to government. Indeed, the outsourcing of back-office processes as well as customer relationship management is one way to engage the private sector. However, what our scenarios hint at a reversal of such relationships. Government agencies will deliver services to private-sector undertakings that design and deliver citizen-centric services. Government services should no longer be seen as unique, but as part of the broad ecosystem of services that citizens use from financial services, retail, travel, telecom and other industry sectors. Technology and increasingly open, and converging standards make a new breed of integrated services possible: The "one-stop shops" for those services will be enterprises that command their customer/citizen attention because of brand strength, the ability to innovate and the clear value added. What are the chances for governments to be in that league? On the other hand, because government services will remain an important component of service delivery, make sure that the leading one-stop hops can easily integrate their service frameworks with government, preventing technical as well as legal or political constraints from delaying what could be a quantum leap in service delivery.

If this is the future, will government portals completely vanish? Of course not. They will be an important part of government branding (like the national flag), but one should not expect them to be important service hubs.

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A recent article on eWeek summarizes what the so-called "Generation Y" (people born between 1977 and 1990) will bring to the IT department workplace. This group's continuous exposure to technology the related behavioral changes will make the members of Generation Y more-impatient job hoppers, yet perhaps more creative than their predecessors. This will have interesting implications for IT departments in government agencies, where, in most cases, technological change will continue to occur more slowly than in the private sector because of more regulatory constraints and greater risk aversion. For one thing, the traditionally long tenures of civil servants will keep shrinking, which means that government agencies will need to come to terms with a more "volatile" workforce. Although external service providers can help, government agencies will need to retain critical skills in-house, and the faster employee turnover amongsuppliers will not make things any easier.

Members of Generation Y will be in management positions (at the middle and top levels) by 2020, and not just in IT departments (or whichever areas will manage IT by then). The ranks of elected officials will also include more Generation Y'ers by 2020. Therefore, with a new breed of managers and politicians that has been heavily exposed to technology and has repeatedly witnessed its inadequate use, it is hoped that technology-driven transformation will become a normal trait in government organizations. However, will government be able to retain the most talented people, or will these individuals be so disappointed by the earlier part of their careers —marked by low-tech environments and a lack of flexibility — to abandon government and leave the public sector with a much greater skill shortage challenge than it faces today? Moreover, will this force government to outsource critical processes to a much greater degree than we can envisage today?

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