Lack of 'digital dexterity' set to harm public sector AI investment

We reported a few weeks ago on the challenges businesses face in getting workers to adapt to new generative AI technology.

The latest report from digital experience specialist Nexthink, based on a survey of 220 public sector IT decision makers, shows that this is a particular problem in the public sector, with 96 percent of IT leaders believing this new era of digital transformation will increase digital friction.

Only 47 percent of public sector employees are deemed to have the digital dexterity required to adapt to technological change. While a further 93 percent of respondents expect workers to be daunted by new technologies such as Generative AI.

"Federal departments have a legislative mandate to simultaneously digitally modernize and provide the first-class public services that Americans deserve," says Chris Sibold, regional VP, federal at Nexthink. "Yet if federal employees themselves are struggling with substandard digital experiences, how are they supposed to offer good ones to the citizens they serve?"

Public sector IT leaders expect a 44 percent rise in the volume of applications being used over the next three years. In fact, 71 percent report that their organization rolls out a new application, tool, or platform once a month. But this is difficult to guide employees through, with 68 percent admitting there are too many users in the organization for IT to provide adequate adoption support for everyone. Without proper guidance, however, application rollouts suffer, leading to lower productivity (65 percent), reduced collaboration (54 percent), increased IT support tickets (47 percent), and higher employee dissatisfaction (45 percent).

In addition 43 percent of federal IT leaders admit they struggle to put an exact monetary value on AI investments, while 96 percent want to improve their ability to identify spend on underperforming assets such as applications and enabling technologies.

"The public sector is under immense cost pressure and it's vital for every department make the most out of their IT investments and unlock higher civil servant productivity," says Shantanu Singh, public sector lead, UK&I at Nexthink. "Without clear visibility and insight into the user experience, it's simply not possible. With all departments going through such intense digital transformation, it's essential to have good DEX metrics in place to drive adoption of new tools as well as identifying and removing cultural or technological barriers to public services efficiency."

You can get the full report on the Nexthink site.

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