IoT will drive citizen engagement by 2020 as more than 50% of government agencies with direct public reach will move at least 25% of their programmatic budget to Third Platform technologies and IoT.

The world’s governments are under pressure to improve end-to-end citizen experience, optimise resource allocation, and re-imagine the way their employees, partners, and suppliers contribute to service delivery.

In an IOT Government report market watcher IDC exposed technologies such as cloud, mobile, social, and Big Data, which will create opportunities to deliver original business capabilities along with the accelerated innovation in areas such as robotics, natural interfaces, cognitive systems, and IoT.

Based on a set of specific vision, people, process, and technology dimensions and outcomes, the study identified five maturity stages for citizen experience.

At a first stage, citizen requests entering governments’ agencies were received through multiple, independent channels within the established programmatic, organisational, and technology constraints.

On a different level, government agencies began to employ business process automation (BPA) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems that had been tuned to the specific needs and requirements of government to offer better integration of services for citizens and the limited sharing of information across systems and programs.

The organisation claimed that at a third stage, government efforts shifted from being programmatic to citizen-centric requiring deeper and broader implementation of BPA, CRM, and other systems that resulted in digitised workflows across traditional engagement channels and back-end systems.

In order to extend citizen engagement and citizen self-service beyond traditional engagement channels, government organisations would be able to employ advanced digital, web 2.0, and social technologies in the next phase.

IDC’s last stage focused on governments being allowed to offer a consistent and contextual experience for the citizen across channels. This would integrate with private sector programs via qualified data about citizens and preferences being used and integrated within and across channels.

Massimiliano Claps and Alan Webber, research directors at IDC Government Insights, said: "Government executives who want to drive citizen value should invest in 3rd Platform technologies and address the organisational change issues that will be encountered, including updating the programmatic mission, shifting and optimising workflows, and managing legislative expectations."