Government CIOs Must Play Larger Role in Technology Adoption
Hot on the heels of a report from Gartner that states that the burden of legacy technologies is stifling government IT innovation, a new survey from DLT partner, SolarWinds, identifies some more surprising barriers to new technology adoption.
Budget Constraints, End-User Impact Identified as Top Barriers to Technology Adoption
No surprises, however, in the number one spot – budget limitations, hotly followed by security and compliance concerns. Yet, take a look at the remainder of the list. Adoption is also limited by a shortage or resources and executive involvement (or lack of it).
Respondents (who included federal IT practitioners, managers and directors) cite the top barriers to adoption as:
- Budget limitations (78%)
- Security/compliance concerns (55%)
- The need to continue supporting old, legacy technology (53%)
- Shortage of IT personnel (51%)
- Inability to convince decisions makers of need and/or benefit (47%)
- Lack of IT empowerment (37%)
CIO Involvement Falls Short
There’s no doubt that IT’s ability to successfully adopt new technologies is critical to long-term mission success (over two thirds of those surveyed agree). So how does IT overcome these barriers? In addition to more resources, better training and development, the SolarWinds report suggests that the government CIO has a much bigger role to play than may currently be the case.
Most IT pros consider the CIO’s primary role to be budget approvals (54%) and strategic council and guidance (47%), while only 38 percent noted that their CIO is involved in all areas of IT. While more than one quarter said their CIO is either a barrier or uninvolved.
A similar percentage believe that stronger CIO support with liaising with other business leaders will lead to greater IT empowerment. Likewise, more or better strategic counsel and guidance from the CIO and more timely CIO approvals rounded out the list of IT’s top needs.
Empowerment is Key to Technology Adoption
New technology is one thing, but agencies can only progress and perform as quickly as IT can enable them to do so.
“… government IT organizations must ensure they are empowering IT pros to overcome barriers that they have traditionally faced in implementing and using that technology so they can see results right away,” said Suaad Sait, executive vice president, products and markets, SolarWinds.
What do you think?
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