ART - Business Intelligence in the Public Sector 2010

This document is a sector insight report by Aberdeen Group, focusing on the value of efficient resource utilization in business intelligence (BI) and information management in the public sector. The report highlights the challenges faced by public sector organizations in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, including shrinking budgets and the need to justify every dime received. The report emphasizes the importance of optimizing resource utilization, particularly in information management, as organizations confront disappearing discretionary budgets. The report draws from a survey of 82 public sector organizations, with missions ranging from health and human services to public education, financial reporting, public safety, legislation/justice, public utilities, transportation services, and emergency response. The top pressures driving BI investment in the public sector include insufficient technical capabilities, the need to replace "gut-feel" decisions with "fact-based" decisions, the need to remove spreadsheet-based processes, and the need to gain visibility into key business processes. The report also highlights the internal pressures faced by public sector organizations, such as a lack of visibility into key operating processes and the need to move away from spreadsheets as a primary analytical solution. The challenges in data management include integrating information from disparate sources, lack of cooperation from internal stakeholders, difficulty accessing needed information resources, incomplete or unreliable data, and difficulty integrating information from different sources. The report emphasizes the importance of efficient BI and information management in improving operational visibility for public sector organizations and helping them execute their mission. The top performing public sector organizations are distinguished based on three performance metrics: time to integrate new data sources, average number of days to integrate new data sources, ratio of employees supported to dedicated BI administrators, and delivery of information within the required time frame. The top performers outstrip their peers across these metrics, demonstrating the value of efficient resource utilization in the public sector.