Government CIOs to Focus Technology Investments on Data Analytics and Cybersecurity in 2019, Gartner Says

Chief Information Officers in government are recognizing the importance of investing in game-changing technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics and blockchain. Spending on cybersecurity is projected to continue to rise as the government recognizes its role as the steward of public data, according to Gartner.

Gartner’s 2019 CIO Agenda Survey, which compiles data from 3,102 CIOs across major industries in 89 countries, including 528 government CIOs, underscores two technologies attracting more investment from governments and businesses than ever: cybersecurity and data analytics.

Analysts found that, in all levels of government, the most common areas of increased technology spending in 2019 are business intelligence (BI) and data analytics (43%), cyber/information security (43%) and cloud services/solutions (39 percent). Cloud dropped from first place last year to second overall for 2019, according to the report.

“In today’s digital world, cyberattacks are highly visible, increasingly malicious and costly, and they erode the public’s trust,” according to Rick Howard, VP analyst at Gartner. “Government CIOs have steadily increased their prioritization of cybersecurity over the years and have gained executive commitment to vigilance in ensuring that ever-evolving malicious attacks and threats are mitigated to the greatest extent possible.”

Gartner pins these results on digital maturity, noting that 18% of CIOs in all levels of government have prioritized digital initiatives this year as key to mission outcomes. The next three business priorities for government are industry-specific goals (13%), operational excellence (13%) and cost optimization/reduction (8%).

The survey indicates that governments are making deliberate progress toward designing and delivering digital services, achieving maturity comparable to other industries.

High-profile data breaches have highlighted cybersecurity analytics as a formidable weapon against sophisticated attacks and advanced threats that elude prevention mechanisms at endpoint level. It is perhaps no wonder that CIOs in all verticals are beginning to recognize the importance of investing in analytics solutions to bolster the entire cyber-resilience effort.

Last year, the think tank acknowledged Network Traffic Analytics as “an emerging category of security product that uses network communications as the foundational data source for detecting and investigating security threats and anomalous or malicious behaviors within that network.”