Public Sector Renews Focus on Employee and Citizen Digital Experiences

Learn more about Riverbed

Government agencies are transforming to improve the digital experience for employees and citizens, allowing them to achieve key goals, including unleashing staff productivity, recruiting and retaining talent in the public sector, and delivering on the mission, according to the Global Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Survey from Riverbed.

This transformation is also proving critical in overcoming the sector's many challenges, including the acceleration of hybrid work and a skills shortage as the workplace and workforce shift at an unprecedented pace.

Evolution at the Speed of Today's Employees

Every industry is facing a talent shortage, and the public sector is no exception. As longer-standing staff members retire, a new generation of digitally native Millennial and Gen Z workers enter with high expectations of their technology and digital experience. In fact, 86% of the public sector leaders surveyed believe they'll need to provide more advanced digital experiences as a fresh generation of employees enter the workforce.

New investment areas include unified observability platforms, which can deliver exceptional DEX by providing visibility, AI and actionable insight into entire infrastructures; 74% of IT respondents in government believe unified observability with greater automation can help close the skills gap.

Additionally, new investments are expected to support the hybrid workforce, as 49% of public sector employees operate in a hybrid model, and 92% of public sector leaders surveyed say hybrid working enhances their ability to recruit talent and remain competitive in the future. As a result, 83% of public sector leaders who responded to the survey plan to invest in technology over the next 12-18 months to support this hybrid workforce.

Enhanced digital experiences aren't simply considered a nice-to-have either. The survey showed that 58% of leaders in the public sector believe there would be a disruptive or reputational impact on their organization if the DEX needs of younger generations aren't met, while 63% agree that these employees would consider leaving the government organization if they didn't enjoy seamless digital experiences.

The Role of the Public Sector CIO is Shifting

As CIOs are consulted on significant strategic decisions that affect recruitment and productivity, they're expected to adopt a more prominent role within the leadership team.

81% of public sector decision-makers surveyed acknowledge the increasing relevance of IT within their organization's leadership team. In addition, 89% of the respondents agree that IT is more responsible for driving innovation now than it was three years ago. In effect, the pressure is on IT and its leaders to make smart investments and implement technologies that will support the cause and mission rather than adding extra complexity.

Decision-Makers Express a Heightened Interest in AI and Cloud

Separate research on government digitization from Deloitte says that the ultimate aim of governments must be from "doing" digital to "being" digital, which means "the human experience is elevated. Human-centered design and advanced technologies like AI, cyber, and cloud are used to radically improve service delivery by transforming government operating models."

McKinsey agrees, stating that "by digitizing processes and making organizational changes, governments can enhance services, save money, and improve citizens quality of life", and the Global Government Forum names digital transformation as one of the top four priorities for 2024.

This aligns with Riverbed's findings, as 80% of public sector leaders surveyed are planning to accelerate digital experience adoption and implementation.

Additionally, the survey found that the cloud (44%), AI (38%), and automation (33%) will become mission-critical priorities over the next 18 months. Unified observability uniquely fuses all these technologies while providing holistic visibility across physical and virtual environments, plus additional productivity-boosting functionality through AI and automation.

88% of the leaders surveyed agree that unified observability is important (45% critically important) to deliver DEX, and 87% say there must be greater investment in unified observability solutions that provide actionable insights for better employee and customer digital experience.

Methodology: The Riverbed Global Digital Employee Experience Survey 2023 polled 1,800 global IT decision makers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs) across 10 countries and seven industries, including 320 public sector leaders. The survey was conducted by Sapio Research in May 2023 to explore generational expectations, hybrid work, the evolving role of IT, and challenges and strategies to delivering an exceptional DEX.

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Public Sector Renews Focus on Employee and Citizen Digital Experiences

Learn more about Riverbed

Government agencies are transforming to improve the digital experience for employees and citizens, allowing them to achieve key goals, including unleashing staff productivity, recruiting and retaining talent in the public sector, and delivering on the mission, according to the Global Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Survey from Riverbed.

This transformation is also proving critical in overcoming the sector's many challenges, including the acceleration of hybrid work and a skills shortage as the workplace and workforce shift at an unprecedented pace.

Evolution at the Speed of Today's Employees

Every industry is facing a talent shortage, and the public sector is no exception. As longer-standing staff members retire, a new generation of digitally native Millennial and Gen Z workers enter with high expectations of their technology and digital experience. In fact, 86% of the public sector leaders surveyed believe they'll need to provide more advanced digital experiences as a fresh generation of employees enter the workforce.

New investment areas include unified observability platforms, which can deliver exceptional DEX by providing visibility, AI and actionable insight into entire infrastructures; 74% of IT respondents in government believe unified observability with greater automation can help close the skills gap.

Additionally, new investments are expected to support the hybrid workforce, as 49% of public sector employees operate in a hybrid model, and 92% of public sector leaders surveyed say hybrid working enhances their ability to recruit talent and remain competitive in the future. As a result, 83% of public sector leaders who responded to the survey plan to invest in technology over the next 12-18 months to support this hybrid workforce.

Enhanced digital experiences aren't simply considered a nice-to-have either. The survey showed that 58% of leaders in the public sector believe there would be a disruptive or reputational impact on their organization if the DEX needs of younger generations aren't met, while 63% agree that these employees would consider leaving the government organization if they didn't enjoy seamless digital experiences.

The Role of the Public Sector CIO is Shifting

As CIOs are consulted on significant strategic decisions that affect recruitment and productivity, they're expected to adopt a more prominent role within the leadership team.

81% of public sector decision-makers surveyed acknowledge the increasing relevance of IT within their organization's leadership team. In addition, 89% of the respondents agree that IT is more responsible for driving innovation now than it was three years ago. In effect, the pressure is on IT and its leaders to make smart investments and implement technologies that will support the cause and mission rather than adding extra complexity.

Decision-Makers Express a Heightened Interest in AI and Cloud

Separate research on government digitization from Deloitte says that the ultimate aim of governments must be from "doing" digital to "being" digital, which means "the human experience is elevated. Human-centered design and advanced technologies like AI, cyber, and cloud are used to radically improve service delivery by transforming government operating models."

McKinsey agrees, stating that "by digitizing processes and making organizational changes, governments can enhance services, save money, and improve citizens quality of life", and the Global Government Forum names digital transformation as one of the top four priorities for 2024.

This aligns with Riverbed's findings, as 80% of public sector leaders surveyed are planning to accelerate digital experience adoption and implementation.

Additionally, the survey found that the cloud (44%), AI (38%), and automation (33%) will become mission-critical priorities over the next 18 months. Unified observability uniquely fuses all these technologies while providing holistic visibility across physical and virtual environments, plus additional productivity-boosting functionality through AI and automation.

88% of the leaders surveyed agree that unified observability is important (45% critically important) to deliver DEX, and 87% say there must be greater investment in unified observability solutions that provide actionable insights for better employee and customer digital experience.

Methodology: The Riverbed Global Digital Employee Experience Survey 2023 polled 1,800 global IT decision makers (ITDMs) and business decision makers (BDMs) across 10 countries and seven industries, including 320 public sector leaders. The survey was conducted by Sapio Research in May 2023 to explore generational expectations, hybrid work, the evolving role of IT, and challenges and strategies to delivering an exceptional DEX.

Related Links

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Clearing the Path to AI: Why Vendor Consolidation Matters Now

Enterprises are under pressure to scale AI quickly. Yet despite considerable investment, adoption continues to stall. One of the most overlooked reasons is vendor sprawl ... In reality, no organization deliberately sets out to create sprawling vendor ecosystems. More often, complexity accumulates over time through well-intentioned initiatives, such as enterprise-wide digital transformation efforts, point solutions, or decentralized sourcing strategies ...

Cold Data, Hot Problem: Why AI Is Rewriting Enterprise Storage Strategy

Nearly every conversation about AI eventually circles back to compute. GPUs dominate the headlines while cloud platforms compete for workloads and model benchmarks drive investment decisions. But underneath that noise, a quieter infrastructure challenge is taking shape. The real bottleneck in enterprise AI is not processing power, it is the ability to store, manage and retrieve the relentless volumes of data that AI systems generate, consume and multiply ...

Observability at a Crossroads: AI, Economics, Complexity and the Enduring Power of Open Source

The 2026 Observability Survey from Grafana Labs paints a vivid picture of an industry maturing fast, where AI is welcomed with careful conditions, SaaS economics are reshaping spending decisions, complexity remains a defining challenge, and open standards continue to underpin it all ...

Explainability Is the New Battleground in AI-Powered Observability

The observability industry has an evolving relationship with AI. We're not skeptics, but it's clear that trust in AI must be earned ... In Grafana Labs' annual Observability Survey, 92% said they see real value in AI surfacing anomalies before they cause downtime. Another 91% endorsed AI for forecasting and root cause analysis. So while the demand is there, customers need it to be trustworthy, as the survey also found that the practitioners most enthusiastic about AI are also the most insistent on explainability ...

Empowering the Human Side of the Autonomous IT Age

In the modern enterprise, the conversation around AI has moved past skepticism toward a stage of active adoption. According to our 2026 State of IT Trends Report: The Human Side of Autonomous AI, nearly 90% of IT professionals view AI as a net positive, and this optimism is well-founded. We are seeing agentic AI move beyond simple automation to actively streamlining complex data insights and eliminating the manual toil that has long hindered innovation. However, as we integrate these autonomous agents into our ecosystems, the fundamental DNA of the IT role is evolving ...

AI Scale Is Outpacing Infrastructure - and IT Leaders Are Running Out of Time

AI workloads require an enormous amount of computing power ... What's also becoming abundantly clear is just how quickly AI's computing needs are leading to enterprise systems failure. According to Cockroach Labs' State of AI Infrastructure 2026 report, enterprise systems are much closer to failure than their organizations realize. The report ... suggests AI scale could cause widespread failures in as little as one year — making it a clear risk for business performance and reliability.

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The quietest week your engineering team has ever had might also be its best. No alarms going off. No escalations. No frantic Teams or Slack threads at 2 a.m. Everything humming along exactly as it should. And somewhere in a leadership meeting, someone looks at the metrics dashboard, sees a flat line of incidents and says: "Seems like things are pretty calm over there. Do we really need all those people?" ... I've spent many years in engineering, and this pattern keeps repeating ...

Observability Costs Rising Faster Than Value

The gap is widening between what teams spend on observability tools and the value they receive amid surging data volumes and budget pressures, according to The Breaking Point for Observability Leaders, a report from Imply ...

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IT's Motivation Crisis Is Really a Process Crisis

If your best engineers spend their days sorting tickets and resetting access, you are wasting talent. New global data shows that employees in the IT sector rank among the least motivated across industries. They're under a lot of pressure from many angles. Pressure to upskill and uncertainty around what agentic AI means for job security is creating anxiety. Meanwhile, these roles often function like an on-call job and require many repetitive tasks ...