From CX and business process – to telework and the impact of managing technology infrastructure on continuing resolutions – predictions are part forecast and part aspiration
by Intelliworx
If we set accuracy aside for a moment, if there’s one thing humans do well it’s making predictions.
Our brains absorb inputs from our five senses and try to predict what will happen next and how we should feel or act. When things don’t match our prediction, that is our brain’s expectations, we respond with emotions like joy, anger and fear.
This means predictions are a physiological part of humanity. It’s fitting then that at the year’s end, we might take a step back and think about our predictions for the next year, 2025.
Often such predictions are part forecast and part aspiration. In some ways, predictions are what we hope will happen, based on current information. In both cases, it’s an interesting and fun thought experiment. That’s why we have put together this list of predictions for government technology in 2025.
1. CX becomes central to business process automation
“The government will find new and better ways to provide what their employees and citizens need through the use of enhanced business process automation. Customer experience (CX) has a broad interpretation within the government space and for those dealing with the government.
For most, it’s the ability to reach an experienced agent who can answer questions or solve an issue. For others, it’s an online process that is easy, intuitive, and provides a high level of confidence their issue will be resolved in a timely and accurate manner.
With interactions by employees and external citizen clients relying more and more on automation, CX takes on a different reality. As helpdesk-style automated agents (bots and AI) are becoming more prevalent and fail to adequately answer questions and problems. Dealing with these issues is causing the levels of frustration to rise higher.
As such, customer experience is now quickly becoming the primary focus of business process automation. Whether it’s citizens dealing with the government or employees looking for better ways to do their work, they are looking for the process to be easy, efficient, and accurate.”
– Rob Hankey | CEO | Intelliworx
2. CX drives government efficiency
“Government agencies are always looking for ways to cut costs, reducing staff being a primary method, and still provide the level of service that their employees and citizens demand and expect. Easily finding the correct site, reducing the number of times the same data needs to be entered, finding and making the process simple and efficient, and ensuring the process is complete the first time are the best ways to accomplish this.
Agencies have way too many stove-piped applications, many are out of date, mismanaged, or very difficult to navigate. Combining multiple applications that use the same information, possibly providing the user with a portal containing previously submitted information and making the interface simple to use on any device, would greatly enhance the customer experience across the entire spectrum of government processes.”
– Rob Hankey | CEO | Intelliworx
3. Productivity causes “telework” and “RTO” to be referred to simply as “work”
“Government agencies are under pressure to return civil servants back to the office (i.e. RTO). The basis for this pressure is often nothing more than cultural. In other words, those calling people back to the office often do so merely because that’s what’s always been done.
The government unions and workforce have largely resisted back-to-office mandates. They will point out that telework often brings balance to work and life – by avoiding the time they’d otherwise spend commuting. Telework also broadens the pool of talent available for agencies to hire from beyond geographical limitations.
In 2025, both camps will jettison their arguments for productivity metrics. When productivity becomes the standard of effectiveness, terms like ‘telework’ and ‘in-office’ will become irrelevant. Everyone will just call it “work” and no one will care where civil servants sit or stand to get it done.”
– Mark Bates | Chief Product Officer | Intelliworx
4. AI brings new scrutiny to the impact of continuing resolutions
The U.S. Government isn’t known for its budget-making process. It hasn’t met all its budgeting requirements by the deadline in more than 20 years. More recently, rather than passing a budget, the government has been running on continuing resolutions (CRs), which effectively keep things running at current funding levels.
This is okay for operations, but it’s terrible for planning. And it’s proving a tremendous challenge for the civil servants who are dutifully working to modernize the government’s technology infrastructure.
To date, they’ve performed magic tricks – pulling virtual rabbits out of the proverbial hat. But new innovations, like artificial intelligence (AI) is going to challenge this. AI moves too fast, both in terms of performance and in evolution, to adapt adequately without a clear budget.
Consequently, AI is going to bring new scrutiny to the impact of CRs in 2025 and pressure elected leaders to pass a bona fide budget.
– Mike Howlett, CISSP | CIO / CISO | Intelliworx
5. The “time tax” becomes a standard measure of government efficiency
In laying out policy and guidelines for modernization, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) often refers to a “time tax.” This conveys the idea that government forms, communications and rules that are unclear, cost employees and constituents alike to waste a lot of time seeking clarification.
In other words, confusion and verbosity taxes our time, which is a precious resource.
That time slows the government down. For example, it slows permitting, which adds friction to economic development. It also slows down benefit awards, like those earned by veterans or senior citizens. It even slows tax returns, which drags on the money the U.S. Treasury accrues.
All this makes the time tax a potentially interesting measure of government efficiency:
- How long does a permit take on average?
- How long does a benefit application take on average?
- How long does filing a tax return take on average?
Benchmarks will make it easy to spot an anomaly that’s obstructing progress. For example, decision-makers will be able to see clearly when the numbers deviate from the average. More importantly, it will give us a goal for process improvement: can we bring that average time down?
– Rob Hankey | CEO | Intelliworx
6. Government doubles down on personalization
“In 2025, global governments will double down on personalization—not just for compliance reasons, but because citizen expectations demand it. Without bespoke customization, citizens will only grow less engaged if their digital experiences continue to fall short. Creating multiple variations per audience per channel can quickly add up, which is why centralizing content management should be a top priority in any personalization strategy.”
Brian Chidester | Head of Industry Strategy for Public Sector | Adobe
7. The public sector moves to address data quality
“As AI deployment accelerates across federal, state, and local government agencies, access to high-quality training data has become a critical differentiator. With almost every industry indicator pointing to an impending ‘data scarcity’ that could hinder AI advancements, synthetic data has become increasingly essential to progress.
A recent SAS survey revealed that only 52% of public sector organizations currently have governance policies for generative AI, compared to 65% of U.S. organizations overall, and the lack of data is largely responsible for that gap. Driven by the need to tackle data quality, bias, and privacy issues, I predict that synthetic data will have a front seat role in enabling secure and effective AI deployments in the public sector.”
– Mark Weatherford | VP of AI Policy and Standards | Gretel
* Mark is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Digital Government
8. Government cautiously moves toward trusted AI technologies
“Despite large AI investments, government agencies will generally remain risk-averse and reluctant to fully automate AI. However, the rise of trustworthy AI capabilities built into technology, like model cards for evaluating and monitoring model health, will increase confidence and gradually push agencies toward a new era of AI-driven productivity.”
– Jennifer Robinson | Global Strategic Advisor | SAS Public Sector
9. Automation drives a transition to proactive government citizen service
“Historically government agencies have been reactive, waiting until citizens initiate service requests. There have been many attempts to make it easier for citizens to easily and quickly make requests of their government.
In the legacy paper environment, the information from each citizen interaction was stored in a static file which was closed at the end of the engagement. Certainly, there were efforts to glean insights from the files but the efforts were cumbersome. Automation allows the government to collect information in a digital and easily searchable format.
Motivated agencies will start to use this data resource to Identify leading indicators of citizen service requirements and use those to anticipate requests. For example, information about emerging economic circumstances in a geographic region could trigger outreach to businesses in the region offering specific government services that have been requested in the past under similar circumstances.”
– John Martin, JD | Business Analyst | Intelliworx
10. AI accelerates proactive government citizen service
“Building on the prior trend, the big language model technology will be applied to datasets in and across government agencies to improve the identification of leading indicators of citizen service requests.
In addition, AI will more effectively scan the external information environment to identify the emergence of these leading indicators as well as identify the citizens most likely to be in need of services. This will lead to targeted, just-in-time offers of government services to citizens.
AI-driven automation will use information it has gathered about the potential citizen beneficiary to pre-fill the data required to make the request for services saving the citizen additional time. Finally, once the interaction with the citizen begins, AI will use the citizen’s input to identify additional government services that may be helpful.”
– John Martin, JD | Business Analyst | Intelliworx
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Intelliworx serves federal agencies big and small with a range of solutions including application management, government workflow and financial disclosure. We’d welcome the opportunity to show you rather than tell you – you are welcome to request a no-obligation demo
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