What to Expect in the Local Government IT Marketplace

Public Technology Institute (PTI) has identified what it expects to be some of the most pressing issues city and county IT managers will face in 2009 and 2010. Driven by tough economic conditions and declining revenues, these issues are expected to impact local government operations and service delivery over the next two years.

Pressing Issues for 2009-2010:

• There will be further reductions in full-time IT staffing; in some cases local governments will need to hire part-time or contract workers in order to best carry out key IT functions.
• IT spending will be curbed across the board. For individual local governments, PTI expects there will be uneven cuts depending on local economics. Expenditures for Public Safety IT, while also under the threat of reduced budgets, may feel significantly less pain.
• Employee unions will need to come up with positive IT staff solutions as the pendulum has shifted dramatically away from union dominance.
• IT staff that had plans to retire in 2009-2010 will postpone doing so as a result of falling retirement account values. A positive aspect is that prior to the economic meltdown, many local governments were struggling with succession planning and how to retain the intellectual capital of employees who would be retiring after many years of service.
• Shared services will arise out of economic necessity. There will be new and increased opportunities for various forms of local government collaboration between cities, counties, school system, libraries, and other government-based organizations.
• IT departments and functions will be under more scrutiny as IT executives face increasing pressure to provide sound business cases and ROI analysis for IT projects and budgets.
• As cities and counties develop or enhance their strategic approaches to energy management, IT will need to play a key role, or perhaps even drive these efforts.

At the federal level, while the new administration under President Obama will appoint a new federal CTO, most local government IT executives believe that this office will not have ample resources to impact technology services at the local level. However, these executives do see this position as important to championing the cause of using technology to serve the citizen, and other agencies (federal, state and local) can benefit from programs already under way in cities and counties across the country.

"This list is not meant to be a catch-all of every issue facing local government IT departments," said Alan Shark, executive director of PTI. "Rather, based on what PTI is hearing from technology executives, we believe that these are the common issues that local governments are struggling with and these issues should be on the radar screen of every executive."

Public Technology Institute is a national, non-profit technology research organization created by and for cities and counties. The issues listed below are based on interviews that PTI has conducted with IT executives and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) representing local governments across the U.S.