Select Applications That Further Your Digital

Government Technology Platform Goals

Published: 17 December 2018 ID: G00365813

Analyst(s): Alia Mendonsa

Government solution providers are marketing digital government platforms,

but many do not offer the flexibility and extensibility of a true platform. CIOs
must understand the different approaches to platforms in the market to
build a hybrid application platform strategy that aligns with DGTP goals.

Key Findings
■ A digital government technology platform (DGTP) is not any one product. It is an amalgamation
of cross-cutting, horizontal, seamlessly integrated solutions that expose functionality through
APIs.
■ The products on the market today touted as digital government platforms are largely unable to
be componentized and reused. The capabilities are proprietary to the specific system with
which the solution was acquired.
■ Investments in digital government application suites may create inflexibility in system
architectures that inhibit scalability, extensibility and innovation in the longer term.

Recommendations
CIOs modernizing legacy mission-critical applications in government:

■ Leverage this research to understand the differing approaches to digital government

applications in the market today. Closely scrutinize vendor application platform offerings to
ensure alignment with the organization’s digital government strategy.
■ Balance short-term business capability requirements with longer-term application architecture
goals. Create a hybrid application platform strategy, and leverage agile governance
mechanisms to manage your adoption and development of on-premises platforms and cloud
information system platforms.

Table of Contents
 Strategic Planning Assumption............................................................................................................... 2
Analysis.................................................................................................................................................. 2
Definition of a DGTP......................................................................................................................... 3
Understand the Differing Approaches to Digital Government Applications in the Market Today......... 6
Application Providers Have Expanded Their Purview Over Time..................................................6
Application Providers Have Built Application Suites to Meet Evolving Requirements....................8
Vendors Are Iterating Their Suites Toward Proprietary Platforms..................................................9
Application Platforms and aPaaS Are a More Open Alternative................................................. 10
Differentiating the Models............................................................................................................... 11
Balance Short-Term Business Capability Requirements With Longer-Term Application Architecture
Goals..............................................................................................................................................12
Gartner Recommended Reading.......................................................................................................... 13

List of Figures

Figure 1. DGTP and Its Domains and Components................................................................................ 4

Figure 2. Application Providers Have Expanded Capabilities Over Time Into Additional Digital
Government Subplatform Capabilities.................................................................................................... 7
Figure 3. Application Providers Have Developed Application Suites to Expand Process Support............ 8
Figure 4. Representative Proprietary Platform Approach......................................................................... 9
Figure 5. More-Open Application Platforms Enable Development Directly on the Platform Using Included
Tools and Templates.............................................................................................................................11

Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2023, over 80% of digital government implementations that do not build on a technology
platform will fail to meet the government organizations’ objectives.

Analysis
In 2017, Gartner introduced the digital government technology platform. This architectural concept
framework supports furthering an organization’s digital government maturity to achieve the digital
government vision (see “A Digital Government Technology Platform Is Essential to Government
Transformation”). The adoption of DGTPs reduces duplicative efforts to deliver common
functionality across multiple services and agencies.

Many solution providers in the state and local government markets are touting their solutions as
digital government platforms. Where these solutions do provide digital government capabilities,

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 many of the vendor’s architectural design principles are not in alignment with Gartner’s DGTP
framework. Thus, these solutions may not easily support an organization’s long-term IT investment
and platform architecture strategy.

CIOs and their teams must understand what constitutes a technology that provides true platform
capability. In doing so, they can ensure that investments made in technologies today align with the
organization’s information and technology (I&T) strategy to meet the digital government
requirements of tomorrow.

Definition of a DGTP
Digital government technology platforms are a set of cross-cutting, integrated, horizontal
capabilities that enable government services across multiple domains, such as citizen experience,
ecosystem, Internet of Things (IoT), information systems, and data and analytics (see “Hype Cycle
for Digital Government Technology, 2018”). Figure 1 illustrates the five major technology
subplatforms that constitute a DGTP, and includes representative key components of each
subplatform.

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 Figure 1. DGTP and Its Domains and Components

IAM = identity and access management

Source: Gartner (December 2018)

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 The five domains of the framework are:

■ Citizen experience platform — This provides interfaces and technologies, as well as

implements the policies and procedures for citizen and business engagement. It also measures
the experience of these users.
■ Ecosystem platform — It provides digital interfaces and implements the related policies and
procedures for governments and ecosystem partners to exchange data and services.
■ Information system platform — This is the heart of what government IT does today, as it
provides the technologies, policies and procedures for back-office systems.
■ IoT platform — This provides the interfaces, data governance and context, as well as
implements the policies and procedures for collecting and processing data from IoT sensors.
■ Data and analytics platform — It provides advanced analytics, geospatial and location
analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for processing data that is collected or stored
in any area of the platform. This is the core of the DGTP (see “A Digital Government Technology
Platform Is Essential to Government Transformation”).

It should be noted that the subplatforms and components represented are not a set of minimum
requirements, nor are they all inclusive. The model is technologically agnostic and, instead, focuses
on the cross-cutting capabilities that are foundational to a platform for enabling digital government.
These capabilities are leveraged across the organization, by ecosystem partners, and across
business functions. They are elemental to fulfilling the functions and orchestrating the processes of
the various departments and their objectives. These components or platform technologies are
architected in such a way that they are extensible to essentially any other component of the
organization’s architecture, as needed. They can also be combined in numerous configurations to
provide a needed capability to any given process stream (see “How to Build a Digital Business
Technology Platform”).

A DGTP approach to IT architecture facilitates government’s evolution toward digital government

and enables an organization to use and reuse technological functionalities and data elements
toward multiple purposes. The components are used like building blocks that can be assembled in
varying combinations to create different solutions, using mesh app and service architecture (MASA).
This architectural approach increases the sustainability of business process automation for
governments and reduces overall costs for IT over time.

A DGTP approach to digital government can avoid the acquisition or development of duplicate
capabilities for multiple departments via point solutions. At the same time, this approach to
technology investment increases an organization’s ability to respond to evolving needs and
increasing demands for services. The results are increased agility, improved performance and a
catalyst for innovation (see “A Digital Business Technology Platform Is Fundamental to Scaling
Digital Business”).

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 Understand the Differing Approaches to Digital Government Applications in the
Market Today

Application Providers Have Expanded Their Purview Over Time

The government solutions marketed today have roots largely in the information system subplatform
of the DGTP — the gray section of the DGTP in Figure 1. For example, enterprise solutions that
have traditionally served core organizational process functions, such as those in finance/ERP,
community development and regulation, and case management, are positioned in the information
system subplatform of the DGTP framework. These applications, in particular, have evolved over
time to expand their capabilities, delving into the other subplatforms of the DGTP — citizen
experience, ecosystems, IoT, and data and analytics.

Enterprise solution providers like Oracle and Tyler Technologies, for example, have added
application modules (through development or acquisition) to their offerings to support numerous
business processes across a government enterprise. As new technologies in areas like business
intelligence (BI), analytics and IoT have emerged, they have added or are enhancing these
capabilities within their portfolios, as are other solution providers like Salesforce and Microsoft.

In addition, enterprise solution providers, like SAP, are recognizing the importance of ecosystem
management and have developed solutions to connect and manage the diverse relationships that
government organizations must have with their supply chains and stakeholders. Tyler Technologies’
Socrata Connected Government Cloud expands its offerings into the ecosystems and analytics
subplatforms as well. CRM system offerings like Zendesk and Ecquaria have layered early AI
capabilities onto their solutions, such as chatbots for first-tier customer support. Companies are
enabling access to their applications through conversational interfaces, such as NIC’s use of Alexa
and Cortana.

Most providers, including Tyler Technologies, CGI, NIC, SAP, Accela and CSDC, for example, are
layering multichannel engagement, geolocational or graphical analysis tools on top of or under their
solutions to provide additional capabilities across the subplatforms of the DGTP. The evolution over
time of a representative information system offering could be visualized as shown in Figure 2.

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 Figure 2. Application Providers Have Expanded Capabilities Over Time Into Additional Digital Government Subplatform Capabilities

Source: Gartner (December 2018)

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 Application Providers Have Built Application Suites to Meet Evolving Requirements
Application providers marketing digital government platform solutions today typically began with
one successful built-to-purpose application. Then through development and acquisition, they began
marketing additional built-to-purpose applications. They often offer ERP or financial management
solutions for enterprise use, in addition to applications specifically designed to support the
processes of social services, public safety, community development and regulation, and so on.

The result is a constellation of point applications that comprehensively meet the needs of specific
departments, and that may share some data, where appropriate, across applications as part of their
business processes via integration and, more recently, APIs. This constellation or suite of
applications can effectively support numerous discrete business processes across an organization.

However, the capabilities aren’t generally extensible to other applications that reside outside of the
vendor’s portfolio (see Figure 3). Vendors have focused on integration within their portfolios of
products and not on interoperability with other competing or open-source products. This organic
growth toward digital government inadvertently reinforces government’s traditional silos by
segmenting data and duplicating core functionalities across numerous point solutions.

Figure 3. Application Providers Have Developed Application Suites to Expand Process Support

Source: Gartner (December 2018)

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 Vendors Are Iterating Their Suites Toward Proprietary Platforms
Many government enterprise application vendors have iterated their delivery models over the past
few years. The current approach is a proprietary application platform on which application and
functionality modules for specific business processes are plugged in as the organization requires.
The foundational platform contains the core capabilities that all platform users will require, such as
single sign-on or IAM, collaboration tools, dashboard reporting, AI, and mobile access tools. Built-
for-purpose applications are stacked on top of the platform for specific business needs, such as for
financial management, licensing and permitting, public safety, and utilities.

Enterprise service buses and other APIs and integrations via the platform support more-seamless
integration and data sharing among the application modules that reside on the platform (see Figure
4). These application platforms can be delivered on-premises, but are increasingly being delivered in
the cloud via SaaS costing models.

Figure 4. Representative Proprietary Platform Approach

Source: Gartner (December 2018)

This approach is indeed an application platform and can offer more-seamless integration and robust
functionality than a constellation of applications. Additional DGTP capabilities, such as analytics,
ecosystem management and customer experience capabilities, are available to be leveraged by any
of the applications residing on the platform. However, the platform capabilities are not easily
extensible to applications residing outside of the platform, and applications not created by the
platform vendor typically cannot be added to the proprietary platform. The proprietary platform

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 model creates vendor lock-in that may be incredibly complex, difficult and expensive to replace in
the future as newer technologies emerge.

Application Platforms and aPaaS Are a More Open Alternative

A third approach toward application platforms and application platform as a service (aPaaS) is
slowly gaining traction. Application platforms in the market today provide core capabilities, like
workflow, IAM and role-based access, APIs, metadata, BI, and dashboard reporting, and appear
architecturally similar to the proprietary platform. However, these platforms take a different
approach to applications and their functionalities.

Instead of self-contained, built-for-purpose applications residing on top of the platform, these

platforms provide business process management and case management, multichannel
engagement, and geolocational analysis capabilities, among others, as building blocks for
configuration into discrete solutions. Solutions can be developed internally or purchased prebuilt by
a vendor that used the platform’s functionalities to build the solution. The approach ensures all
functionalities are extensible to and interoperable with all other solutions built on the platform (see
“Building an Agile Application Architecture With Integrated Apps, APIs and Services”).

In addition, the workflows and processes developed can be duplicated and reused in support of
other similar processes and, in fact, may leverage the same solution, with only slight configuration
differences to align with unique process requirements. This approach to application development
more easily facilitates alignment with the DGTP approach (see Figure 5).

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 Figure 5. More-Open Application Platforms Enable Development Directly on the Platform Using Included Tools
and Templates

Source: Gartner (December 2018)

Differentiating the Models

Via APIs, disparate solutions are increasingly sharing more-robust datasets for use in other
applications, and improved integration has furthered progress in digital maturity. However, many of
the capabilities that have been embedded within an application, such as BI and analytics or
multichannel access, cannot be leveraged beyond the application itself. Much of these
functionalities, while expanding the purview of a particular application’s capabilities into other
domains of the DGTP, are not reusable, extendable components to be leveraged by other IT
systems.

The strategy of many government “megavendors” is to offer proprietary products that, while
comprehensive, maximize profitability and encourage vendor lock-in. While the purview of these
solutions has greatly expanded, they do not constitute a DGTP. Further, these in-app capabilities
may be less robust than the functionalities that a platform solution could enable when layered with
the application. The point solution or best-in-class approach to application strategy can meet near-
term business capability requirements and advance digital government capabilities quite well. But
the narrow application of these expanded capabilities could constrain the longer-term goals of
agility and continuous innovation via a DGTP-oriented architecture.

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 A DGTP approach to architecture enables an organization to componentize a certain capability,
regardless of its technology domain, and then to use and reuse that capability, microservice and so
on across the organization as needed (see “Building a Digital Business Technology Platform”). The
reuse and extension of a capability, regardless of the process or workflow for which it was originally
developed or purchased, differentiate a DGTP approach versus a comprehensive application suite
offering.

The solutions on the market today touted as digital government platforms are largely unable to be
componentized and reused. The capabilities are proprietary to the specific system with which the
solution was acquired. While CIOs may find a “digital government platform in a box” enticing for
achieving digital government quick wins, it may not satisfy the organization’s needs in the future.
Moreover, the CIO or the CIO’s successors may find it a herculean effort to modernize later.

Balance Short-Term Business Capability Requirements With Longer-Term

Application Architecture Goals
CIOs must consider the pros and cons between immediate acquisition of point or commercial off-
the-shelf (COTS) solutions to satisfy immediate requirements for a specific department or process,
and a broader investment in longer-term components of a DGTP. The latter is a more complex
evaluation that requires additional stakeholder input and governance mechanisms to execute.

The CIO must identify and weigh these pros and cons against time-to-value demands of individual
mission and outcome goals. A clearly articulated I&T strategy and IT principles developed in the
context of the DGTP framework will provide CIOs and their teams with the guideposts to identify
opportunities and leverage existing initiatives to further a DGTP approach wherever possible.

CIOs must execute multiple activities to develop and “sell” their DGTP strategy:

■ A hybrid application platform strategy can support the organization’s execution of a

pragmatic approach to moving toward a DGTP architecture (see “2017 Strategic Roadmap for
Application Architecture, Infrastructure and Integration”). It enables the organization to manage
its adoption and maintenance of on-premises and cloud platforms incrementally over time. This
strategy considers platform life cycles, specific vendor exposures, costs and risks, and will
ensure correct governance and cost control of the application platform portfolio against
enterprise IT needs.
■ Instituting platform-enabling technology standards can encourage new business investments
to build out and leverage common capabilities that can form the foundation of a digital
technology platform. As new system needs are identified or existing systems need to be
enhanced due to modernization and application portfolio rationalization efforts, business
leaders can support new enterprisewide capabilities, or endure an exception process to justify a
one-off silo solution. Enterprise architecture and governance mechanisms must adapt to
accommodate a more fluid and informal evaluation process for these opportunities, without
creating additional bureaucracy and stagnating innovation. (See “Rethink EA Governance,
Assurance and Review Boards in the Digital Business Era.”)
■ CIOs can charge business unit relationship managers and solution and enterprise architects to
proactively embed platform capabilities in the ideation and design phases, using a product-

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 oriented approach to design and development. For example, when one department within an
organization seeks a new solution, the CIO and the CIO’s team should first consider whether an
existing or new solution could be leveraged more broadly. CIOs should consider how a solution
might be leveraged as a platform capability across the enterprise in the future, and evaluate
options accordingly. CIOs should keep this evaluation focused on the services (or products) that
will be enabled using a citizen-centric perspective and less so on how an internal process will
be automated.
■ CIOs can challenge solution partners to demonstrate how their solutions meet immediate
functionality requirements, as well as demonstrate solution extensibility and configurability
to other processes and workflows across the enterprise in the future. Through agile,
collaborative governance, IT investment decisions can be made to meet immediate needs,
while longer-term DGTP capability goals are incrementally fulfilled wherever possible.

The drive to digital government challenges organizations of all sizes and scale to temper digital
ambition with longer-term architectural strategy. Organizations that lack the resources and skill sets
to implement a full DGTP approach may find that a proprietary digital government platform best
meets the organization’s capability demands for the immediate future. Other organizations will
construct their own DGTPs incrementally over time.

Either approach will require evolving governance and IT organizational structure and skill sets
toward a product focus. Measuring organizational readiness and urgency can help CIOs to
determine the best immediate path forward for their jurisdiction (see “Toolkit: Digital Government
Urgency, Readiness and Maturity Assessment”).

Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

“Use Application Architecture, Infrastructure and Integration to Implement Digital Business

Technology Platforms”

“How to Govern a Digital Business Technology Platform”

“A Digital Government Technology Platform Is Essential to Government Transformation”

“Digital Business Transformation: A Government Perspective”

“Leverage Platform Business Models to Spark Your Transition to Digital Government”

“Achieving Digital Optimization With Digital Design”

“2017 Strategic Roadmap for Application Architecture, Infrastructure and Integration”

“2018 Strategic Roadmap for Application Strategy”

“Choose the Right Approach to Modernize Your Legacy Systems”

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 “Use Continuous Modernization to Build Digital Platforms From Legacy Applications”

“Technology Insight: The Hybrid Application Platform”

Evidence
“Accela Civic Platform,” Accela

“CGI Advantage ERP Built-for-Government,” CGI

“Amanda Editions,” CSDC

“Are You A.I. Ready?” Ecquaria

“Solutions for Government,” Microsoft

“Gov2Go,” NIC

“Transform the Future of Public Sector,” Oracle

“CRM Is the New Government Service,” Salesforce

“Transform Public Sector With SAP Solutions-Business Value With Intelligent ERP,” SAP

“Connected Government Cloud,” Tyler Technologies

“AI Chatbot,” Zendesk

Vendor briefings during 2017 and 2018 with Accela, CGI, CSDC, Ecquaria, NIC, Oracle, Salesforce,
SAP and Tyler Technologies

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