The 2024 United States presidential election is rapidly approaching, and state and local governments are focusing their efforts on bolstering election security and ensuring the proper safeguards are in place.

The start of a new year often brings uncertainties; but in 2024 one thing is for certain—artificial intelligence (AI) is top of mind nationwide and is expected to have a transformational impact on our society both now and in the future.

The year 2024 is just around the corner, and with a new year typically comes new priorities. However, some things, like digital government, are here to stay. Improving the Citizen Experience will continue to be a top priority both now and, in the future, as the modern world emphasizes the importance of personalized services that provide agility, accountability, transparency, equity, efficiency, adaptability.

Prioritizing Citizen Experience

Numerous reports by various organizations, including the Government Accountability Office, have consistently found insufficiencies in state unemployment insurance programs. These insufficiencies were laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic when increased need for such services, combined with an increase in fraudulent activity targeting unemployment insurance programs, overtaxed states’ unemployment insurance systems.

The annual EDUCAUSE conference highlighted higher education technology trends, goals, challenges, and how to identify a way ahead for higher education institutions to be successful in today’s modern world.

Data analytics played a pivotal role in state, local, and education (SLED) governments’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emphasis on the importance of data has only continued to magnify over the last couple of years. Data analytics and related technology tools provide a host of benefits ranging from real-time data analysis, increased transparency and accountability, streamlined citizen facing services, better decision making and savings in both costs and time.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. So you know something’s wrong when nearly a third of federal government acquisition professionals surveyed say their agency’s acquisition technology makes the job more difficult.

Government agencies strive to lower the cost of products and services to save taxpayers money. They also aim to shorten “procurement administrative lead time,” or PALT—the time from identification of need to delivery of value—to expedite their missions without delay. 

Case work is the universal working style of government agencies. Everything from handling customer service inquiries to issuing permits to responding to weather events—in short, any workflow a public sector organization handles—is a “case” that requires a systematic approach from start to finish.

The good news is that we’ve officially moved into the next phase of the pandemic, where the White House expects the threat of serious illness to be considerably diminished. But the bad news? Nearly 18 million Americans stand to lose the Medicaid benefits granted to them during the public health crisis as eligibility determinations return to pre-pandemic guidelines.