JAN-FEB 2016CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM6TIn My OpinionPlatform Convergence, Analytics, and Mobility Drives Disruptive Business Models in GovernmentBy Niten Malik, Director, US Public Service, Microsofthese days, no organization can afford to spend millions of dollars or take decades to build and maintain even complex systems, especially cash-strapped government agencies. Government business processes are complex and often unique. They must typically meet multiple competing objectives such as balancing national security, privacy or budget constraints, changes in legislation and levels of customer service.The systems developed to meet these requirements are often difficult to maintain and costly to change. It is costly for the business to keep pace with technology innovations. This is especially true when the underlying application development platform requires customization to take advantage of technology innovations to improve its own mission. The predominant strategy for developing systems has been custom code or by modifying traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages. However, aligning government business processes to rigidly defined out-of-the-box ERP workflows has proven expensive and time-consuming. Often, it's a profound challenge to adapt traditional ERP process flows initially developed for commercial business to the government's unique business requirements. Lack of flexibility and the high cost of customizing proprietary work-flows impede innovation and limits business processes from being optimized.To compensate for the lack of process flexibility and more closely align system capabilities to government requirements, agencies often rely on custom code. However, this is costly and time-consuming to develop and maintain. A stable of programmers creating often millions of lines of code raise the level of difficulty. Enforcing methodology, inadequate documentation, and dependence on programmers who alone understand what they've coded slow the pace of innovation. At the end, responsive technology architecture is elusive at best.Get off the ShelfThe challenge facing government programs is reducing cost and adapting to change. The business case must hinge equally on cost savings and mission reliability.Solutions that natively integrate workflow, collaboration, and analytics tools; offer secure cloud deployment optionsNiten Malik
< Page 5 | Page 7 >