Automation, machine learning to shape the future of government: Gartner

Governments have been really good at looking in the rear view mirror, be it reporting on results and evaluating what has already happened. However, Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner, believes the way forward for governments is to instead be able to predict what is about to happen. According to Howard, automating more decision-making tasks will see government workforces freed up to focus on higher value work and achieving their respective policy or legislative objectives. "Analytics becomes the single greatest opportunity to take the wealth of information that is locked up in all of its transactional systems," Howard said. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo on the Gold Coast, Howard said that with a few jurisdictions already experimenting with the likes of IBM's Watson and Microsoft's Sam and Cortana, virtual personal assistants will become the frontline interface between government and citizens.