In 2025, SLED government technology is undergoing a significant transformation, focusing on modernization, efficiency and improved service delivery. Emerging and innovative technology is at the forefront of this transformation, with AI leading the charge. AI’s influence on government operations is undeniable; whether it’s public safety, health, or education, AI is shaping government operations across all verticals.

The Center for Digital Government’s 2025 Beyond the Beltway Market Briefing event took place in Mclean, VA last week where state and local government leaders shared insights into top technology priorities for 2025.

Some of the key topics of discussion were the 2025 state and local market outlook, the potential impact of the new administration on government technology, emerging technologies such as AI, the foundational role of data, the evolving cybersecurity landscape and modernization and the customer experience.
 

With any new executive administration, change is inevitable for federal agency priorities. It remains true, however, that departments and agencies consistently rely on IT products and services and historic trends confirm stability in public sector IT spending under both Republican and Democratic administrations. For FY25, much of the spending has already been laid out in the budget and priorities for FY26 are well under way, so you can expect to see little change to agency needs in the very near term.

Hello from DoDIIS in Omaha, Nebraska! TDSYNNEX Public Sector is once again attending, so if you didn’t make it out to the city that invented the Reuben sandwich, we’ve got you covered. The conference kicked off with a heavy focus on several prevailing themes, notably: cybersecurity, deterrence, interoperability, and data centricity. If you read that list and thought AI was missing – fear not – it was included in discussions, but primarily as a vehicle for aiding in the intelligence community’s (IC) top priorities.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies deal with large volumes of disparate data on a daily basis. Analyzing all this data across multiple data silos and structures, each with their own levels of security permissions, is a big challenge.

Form follows function – and so should your organization’s data!

So much data, so little time. Disparate sources such as sensors, machines, geo-location devices, social feeds, server and security system logs, and more, are generating terabytes of data at unfathomable speeds. Getting any kind of real-time insight and, we dare you to dream, acting on that data as it flows in, is not an easy feat for resource-constrained government agencies.

There are many opportunities in the public sector for data science and data analytics, yet, almost as many challenges. When we kicked off Big Data Month at DLT, we asked our Chief Data Scientist, Sherry Bennett, for her insights. What became clear is that the obstacles to big data success are universal to both the public and private sector: “…everybody…is grappling with the same thing.