Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending, budgets and investment plans. In 2020, we conducted in-person interviews with 129 client executives across North America and Europe, who indicate a continued focus on improving citizen services. Interviews were conducted before and after the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, providing unique insights into evolving priorities. We provide a short summary of some of these insights below and in the PDF available for download on this page.

Becoming digital to meet citizen expectations persists as a top trend and priority

Becoming digital organizations to meet increasing citizen expectations is the most impactful trend once again in 2020, followed by cybersecurity.
 
The most important business and IT priorities this year also continue to center on improving citizen services.

2020 top trends by impact

  1. Becoming digital organizations to meet increasing citizen expectations
  2. Protecting through cybersecurity
  3. Coping with budget pressures through IT consolidation and process automation
  4. Assuring regulatory compliance
  5. Aging workforce – challenge of attracting and retaining upcoming talent

 

Post-pandemic declaration trends show rise in becoming a digital organization

When comparing interviews before and after the pandemic declaration by the WHO, becoming digital rises in impact as a trend (+24%), as does coping with an aging workforce (+4%) and cybersecurity (+3%).

Results from digital strategies are still slow

This year, 86% of state, provincial and local government executives report they have some form of a digital strategy in place, up from 80% last year. Of those, 39% indicate they have an enterprise-wide strategy, but just 15% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem. Only 8% of executives say their organization is producing results from digital strategies, consistent with last year.

Analytics is the top growing innovation investment over the next 3 years

Looking out over the 3 year horizon, 85% of executives indicate that data analytics is their top area of planned innovation investment.

Interest in substantial managed services rises post-pandemic declaration

This year we asked state, provincial and local government executives to share why they use managed services and how they plan to leverage them. The top reasons are to save costs and maintain control.

% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years
36% 2020 (post pandemic declaration)
27% 2020 (pre-pandemic declaration)
30% 2019

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization

State and provincial - IT satisfaction chart 2020

(Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied, showing 3 out of 10 available attributes)

For the third year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. For most attributes, business leaders report lower satisfaction levels with their internal IT compared to IT leaders, with introducing innovation consistently earning the lowest average score.

Learn more about the 2020 CGI Client Global Insights.

Learn more about CGI in State, Provincial and Local Government.

Speak with a CGI expert

To consult with one of our industry experts to learn more about client insights and CGI’s perspectives on business and technology trends, contact us.