In 2022, the US public sector will make great efforts to transform its customer and employee experiences, cybersecurity, and technology. This work will be guided by major new White House mandates on customer experience (CX) and employee experience and cybersecurity, as well as a constellation of state and local programs. Unfortunately, the government’s efforts will produce mixed results.

Join us for a complimentary webinar on February 17 at 12 p.m. ET for details on our six key predictions. In brief, we predict that in 2022:

  1. Three-fourths of government organizations will fail to transform their CX efforts from reactionary to revolutionary. Most government organizations are missing the forest for the trees. They’re focused on box-checking compliance with the project details in new CX mandates. As a result, these organizations will fail to achieve the transformational potential of these mandates, as well as the individual projects within them.
  2. Federal agencies’ mixed efforts will limit federal Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) improvement to 1.5 points. Forrester’s CX Index shows that federal CX has improved modestly over the past two years. Although new White House strategies have the potential to create big leaps in federal CX quality, agencies’ mixed efforts will blunt this potential and limit federal CX to another year of lukewarm improvement.
  3. One-third of US civil servants will become permanent hybrid workers. Implementation of hybrid work will vary by employee role, department type, and geography. Public sector knowledge workers will benefit the most. Departments that fail to adopt a hybrid work model for employees in the most sought-after roles will experience a brain drain as their best employees leave for other public or private sector organizations.
  4. Ten percent of the government administrative workload will be executed by robotic process automation (RPA). Government organizations will expand their use of RPA to eliminate repetitive, low-value tasks. Not all public sector RPA implementations will go smoothly, though. Many organizations will wrestle with change management, reallocation of work, and efforts to standardize tasks.
  5. At least five state and local governments will adopt Zero Trust to revive public trust in digital services. Although these policies will pertain only to government organizations, companies in government supply chains will have to implement Zero Trust, too. Government organizations hope the resulting visible indicators of better cybersecurity within their ecosystems will stabilize the public’s trust in digital government services. Alas, these indicators won’t be enough to boost that trust.
  6. Anemic government IT will account for a failure to spend 20% of technology modernization funds. Funding for government tech transformation has been widely available for years — and has increased in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, two hurdles will continue to prevent government IT shops from spending these funds effectively: 1) IT shops’ low risk tolerance in the face of oversight scrutiny and 2) politically charged technology prohibitions.

In our complimentary webinar on February 17 at 12 p.m. ET, we’ll explore these predictions, offer solutions for trouble spots, and take your questions. So, please join us!