Study: IT underpins state and local investments
Connecting state and local government leaders
A recent report by Onvia describes the fastest-growing segments of government services.
Amid tight budgets, state and local governments must be choosy about where they invest their IT dollars. Increasingly, agencies are leveraging their technology spending to better deliver government services.
Market analysis firm Onvia analyzed requests for proposals and bids from the nearly 500 industries that sell into the state, local and education markets in its “10 Hotspots in Government Contracting” report. Among the fastest-growing segments of government service, IT plays a critical role in the following:
Social services: To make social services more effective, agencies are leveraging predictive analytics to improve programs, better target areas of need and reallocate resources. Onvia’s databases showed agencies have increased their contracting activity for social services by 14 percent, with state agencies issuing the largest share of social service contracts at 40 percent, followed by counties at 32 percent.
Data services: As agencies work to protect data, increase public access to information and ensure cost effective networks, they have contracted for data center consolidation, cloud services, Internet of Things, open data and IT consulting, which increased by 16 percent in 2015. State agencies had the highest share of bids and RFPs at 37 percent, with contracts averaging $6.7 million.
Traffic management: Expecting more traffic and congestion, state and local governments are exploring intelligent transit options over costly highway infrastructure projects as demonstrated by a rise of 19 percent in the number of traffic engineering studies in the last year. Most bids and RFPs came from agencies in California and Florida.
Waste management: To make garbage collection and recycling programs more efficient, agencies are deploying technologies such as radio frequency identification tagging and GPS routing for trash bins, advanced material recovery and solar integration. Consulting opportunities rose by 19 percent in 2015, with one in four focused on improving how landfills operate.
Geospatial information systems: GIS is increasingly folded into larger IT initiatives that help agencies better manage and analyze location-based data to solve problems and monitor infrastructure. GIS is also critical for larger open data projects and smart city initiatives. Cities more commonly seek GIS services, issuing 51 percent of the opportunities. States represent 21 percent of the RFPs, though state GIS contracts tended to be much larger, more complex and expensive.
Read the full report here.