Why government should adopt low-code platforms

Globally, it has become increasingly apparent there is a rapid technology revolution occurring within governments, underpinned by a dramatic shift towards low-code platforms to deliver real outcomes for citizens.

Public sector agencies are recognising the power of these repeatable platforms to deliver value fast, providing long-term capability built for change and supporting strategic and operational outcomes.

In fact, analyst firm Gartner said that by 2025, 70% of new applications developed by enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020.

So why is this unprecedented change in the digital landscape occurring? Well, there are four key elements driving this change:

1. Increased citizen expectations. Citizens are expecting more from government services with the impacts of COVID further accelerating the need for rapid transformation of services to support the new digital norm.
2. Citizen experiences at the core. There’s a need to put the citizen experience at the centre and build around them to deliver more intuitive digital experiences.
3. System and infrastructure modernisation. There’s growing pressure to continuously modernise and digitise ageing enterprise-critical processes, systems and capabilities that can no longer support agencies into the future. Without modernisation, organisations create massive roadblocks to achieving strategic and operational outcomes today and in the future.
4. The skills shortage. A significant emerging workforce crisis involving a lack of skilled professional developers within the marketplace to support digital demand combined with the urgent need to democratise digital enablement to support the growing role transformation of knowledge workers.

Low-code platforms provide solutions to many challenges governments face today, particularly in relation to scalable investments and reducing IT costs — but the benefits don’t stop there.

Here’s why governments are (and should be) investing in low-code solutions:

• Agencies can build more applications, faster by democratising access to application development with visual tools/model-driven processes, automated deployment and execution. Visual, model-driven development has proven to be 12x faster than traditional code and significantly aligns business and technology to reduce rework and wasted effort.
• Low code streamlines the app development process. This means developers can build more with less, focusing on innovation and addressing needs to optimise the value to the organisation.
• They help to achieve scale and agility across the organisation at an enterprise level, managing complexities, and can be deployed in a channel-less manner. As government and citizen needs and opportunities arise, public sector organisations can move more quickly to produce and deploy new digital initiatives targeting the changing requirements of their employees and customers to maximise success.
• Supporting the new digital workforce paradigm by enabling business experts to get involved directly in development, dramatically reducing rework and organisational buy-in, responding more quickly to business changes, investing in new career opportunities for staff and better leveraging value from technical resources.
   

The good news for governments is this isn’t something untried or untested within the public sector, it’s happening (to great success) across the world. For example, when faced with a significant COVID-19 challenge, the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs had to find a way to efficiently manage incoming applications for financial relief for small to medium-sized businesses.

Using low-code platforms, the Bavarian government was able to create a fully digitised process in just five days. This application revolutionised the way the government managed claims for COVID-19 financial aid ensuring more than 300,000 applicants were able to get financial aid amounting to EUR 2.2 billion within several weeks in a time of extreme need for their citizens.

The time of enterprise-scale low-code platforms is here and it is something the public sector must embrace moving forward. It is the solution for government agencies to deliver modern and seamless citizen experiences, now and into the future. Requiring a massive shift from traditional digital build thinking, these new-generation platforms will reshape transformation and the relationship between business and IT, and create the new job roles that will reimagine the modern public service.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/AndSus