This year, technology in government was all about refinement more than anything else.
"I don't think that a lot of the technologies that were important in the private sector really hit the headlines in terms of government, other than the application focus and smart systems for health," said Info-Tech Research Group'sB Andy Woyzbun.
But this was the first year in which the industry saw the amount of digital content created surpass its ability to store it. That onslaught of digital content was coupled with the need for governments to gain some greater insight and understanding into content management, said IDC Canada's Alison Brooks.
At the federal level, government was looking for a way to identify shared services or overlapping services.
"SOA is a bit 'last-year' in the sense that the hype about it was last year, but this year they'll try to pick it up more earnestly," said Brooks. "We'll have a better understanding of the implementation initiatives instead of just talking about the hype."
Governments will continue on the path to enterprise-level thinking, which has been called everything from shared services to enterprise transformation, said IBM Canada's Kim Devooght.
Rather than having departments operate as silos, they've been looking to leverage the strength of larger organizations, whether that's through data centres or other business infrastructure.
When it comes to green technology, 2007 was an exploratory year.
"They're trying to understand what it is and what it means," said Devooght. The use of resources to power data centres and the cost of power are dramatically escalating. At the same time, the cost of computing in a relative sense is declining.
Governments will look at greening their operations, not just to improve their operations, but also for political reasons - since the public is demanding it, he said.
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