Digital Government 2019 – The size of the digital transformation market has exploded in recent years – driven largely by organisational needs to serve changing customer preferences and enhance operational efficiency. The drivers of this have been the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and apps, the increasing penetration of IoT, the growing adoption of cloud services, and the need to improve operational performance to gain competitive benefits in the market. It is therefore inevitable that most nations are now tackling the challenge of creating a smarter government, driven by digital.

A recent EU Commission DESI report highlights that Ireland ranks 10^th in Digital Public Services. It achieves top ranking in Open Data and an almost perfect result in Digital Public Services for Businesses. When it comes to services aimed at and used by citizens though, the results could be seen as less impressive. However, with the Public Services ICT Strategy, and the broader Our Public Service 2020, the building blocks of transformation are now in place. Huge opportunities are presented by the potential use of emerging technologies and the better use of data by public service organisations. As always, the challenge is to ensure that citizens are able and willing to fully access services digitally as well as ensuring organisations are fostering the culture for innovation.

Key Themes for Digital Government 2019:

• The future of digitising public services.
• Key trends for the next five years.
• Citizen engagement – making government accessible.
• Better data for better services.
• Emerging technologies and IoT.
• Robotics and AI: Challenges and opportunities.
• Fostering the culture for innovation.
• Smarter cities to deliver better services.
• Digital inclusion: Technology to empower citizens.
• Improving the user experience.
• Tackling the issue of cyber security.