2026 Top 10 Trends and Priorities for Government - State
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View Our Research and Analyst ServicesTop Priorities for 2026
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01
Strengthen cybersecurity practices
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02
Empower digital government
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03
Effectively integrate AI
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04
Modernize IT
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05
Attract and retain IT talent
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06
Manage valuable data assets
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07
Strengthen digital identity
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08
Enhance application portfolio management
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09
Master adaptive delivery
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10
Transform the CIO role
Strengthen cybersecurity practices
The Challenge
Overcome a persistent and escalating cyber threat landscape targeting state agencies.
Cybersecurity has been ranked the #1 priority for state CIOs by NASCIO for over a decade – and the threat environment in 2024-2025 has intensified further. The Change Healthcare breach in early 2024 disrupted state Medicaid payment systems nationwide, exposing the vulnerability of third-party dependencies in critical state agency operations. Ransomware attacks on state and local governments rose sharply in 2024, with recovery efforts often taking months and costs reaching into the tens of millions. AI-powered attack tools are lowering the barrier for sophisticated intrusions, while expanding cloud adoption and remote work continue to broaden the attack surface. State governments hold some of the most sensitive citizen data – tax records, benefits information, driver's license data – making breaches particularly damaging to public trust and regulatory standing. Cybersecurity and resilience scores 5 out of 5 for state government in the external trend heat map – the maximum rating.
Why It Matters
Secure public trust.
Protecting information is crucial for all levels of government. Publicized security incidents can erode public trust and bring into question the effectiveness of government operations. Effective cybersecurity measures are essential to safeguard data, ensure compliance, and maintain the integrity of government services.
The Solution
Create a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
Develop a systematic approach to cybersecurity, identifying threats, vulnerability, and consequences. This ensures that investments in control measures are appropriate to the risks faced by the agency.
Enhance visibility and understanding.
Work with public sector executives, IT leaders, and legislative officials to improve the visibility and understanding of the community's cybersecurity posture and risk exposure.
Implement robust security measures.
Adopt strong processes, effective technologies, and advanced skill sets to protect against cyber threats. This includes continuous monitoring, regular updates, and training to keep up with evolving threats.
Empower digital government
The Challenge
Meet the growing demand of digital services.
Public sector constituents struggle to meet the growing demand for accessible and user-friendly digital services. Creating seamless and equitable digital experiences that are intuitive, secure, and build trust while also addressing complex requirements and ensuring robust authentication for transactions involving sensitive data is a growing challenge.
Why It Matters
Empower constituents.
Digital services must improve equitable access to government services and participation in democratic processes. Ensuring robust authentication and redesigning service delivery processes are crucial for reducing touchpoints, meeting service level expectations, and building accessibility and security by design.
The Solution
Identify the value streams and use cases that provide the most value.
Use human-centered design, personas, and empathy mapping to identify the best value streams and use cases for digital service delivery. This includes creating user-friendly interfaces and mobile applications.
Ensure seamless access and address conflicts.
Identify and address potential areas of conflict such as privacy, legal, technical, and compliance/security issues. Map value streams, shared capabilities, and conflict areas against a digital government reference architecture.
Develop a roadmap and safeguard data.
Create a roadmap for scaling digital services across the organization. Align data collection, sharing, storage, and analysis for informed decision-making. Safeguard systems and data from cyber threats through proactive monitoring and process controls.
Effectively integrate AI
The Challenge
Balance the transformative potential of AI with the governance demands now required by law.
AI has moved from exploration to operational deployment in state government – and simultaneously, the regulatory environment has shifted dramatically. By mid-2025, more than 20 states had enacted or were advancing AI governance legislation, requiring state agencies to navigate compliance while continuing to innovate. NASCIO's 2024 Strategic Priorities place AI among the top three issues for state CIOs. AI-enabled compliance and reporting scores 5 out of 5 for state government in the external trend heat map – the highest of any trend in the state segment. Key use cases gaining traction include eligibility automation, document processing, fraud detection, constituent service chatbots, and AI-assisted audit preparation. The challenge is no longer whether to pursue AI, but how to govern it responsibly, ensure it is built on quality data, and manage workforce displacement concerns as automation scales across state agency operations.
Why It Matters
Harness the transformative power of AI while meeting new legal and ethical obligations.
AI can significantly improve service delivery speed, reduce administrative burden, and enable data-driven policy decisions at scale. For state governments operating under tight budgets and growing service demands, AI-enabled automation of routine processes offers one of the most significant near-term opportunities. However, without governance frameworks that address bias, transparency, and accountability, AI deployments risk eroding public trust, creating legal liability, and failing to deliver promised efficiencies. States that invest now in responsible AI infrastructure – including data governance, model oversight, and workforce reskilling – will be best positioned to scale deployments and maintain public confidence.
The Solution
Develop an AI strategy.
Incorporate an AI strategy into the broader IT strategy and roadmap. This includes understanding and communicating to leadership the differences between AI and generative AI and establishing responsible AI policies.
Identify and prioritize use cases.
Identify viable use cases for AI and generative AI, from constituent service delivery automation to threat detection and process automation. Use capability maps to identify candidate opportunities and initiatives.
Execute a data strategy and workforce development.
Ensure AI tools achieve intended outcomes using reliable data sources, structured from a data strategy. Identify workforce impacts and build development programs to upskill and reskill workers potentially displaced by hyper-automation.
Modernize IT
The Challenge
Overcome legacy system hurdles that constrain service delivery and block AI adoption.
Governments face significant challenges modernizing aging applications to stay efficient and effective. There is often no framework to communicate and justify modernization efforts, and some users are resistant to change. Competing priorities further undermine the value of modernization investments. Critically, legacy systems are increasingly a barrier to AI adoption: AI tools require clean, accessible, machine-readable data that most legacy platforms cannot provide. IDC's Government IT Spending Outlook identifies legacy modernization as a top-three state government investment category, and Deloitte's GovTech Trends frames it as both a fiscal lever and the prerequisite for digital transformation.
Why It Matters
Modernize for efficiency.
Application modernization is essential to holistically serve the needs of the community. It ensures that government services are efficient, effective, and capable of meeting the demands of constituents, staff, and the organization as a whole.
The Solution
Establish a digital application vision.
Guide modernization efforts and ensure alignment with organizational objectives by gaining a grounded understanding of the digital application construct and prioritize these attributes against digital business goals.
Define the modernization approach.
Obtain a thorough view of the organization and technical complexities, risks, and impacts. Employ the right modernization techniques based on the organization's change tolerance, ensuring a smooth transition.
Build a roadmap.
Clarify the organizational changes needed to support modernization and adoption of digital applications. Providing a clear path forward and help in managing the transition effectively.
Attract and retain IT talent
The Challenge
Address an accelerating public sector IT talent crisis compounded by a widening AI skills gap.
Traditional incentives like pensions and job security are losing appeal as candidate expectations evolve. The highly structured and often unionized nature of public sector workforces favors seniority, slowing upward mobility for skilled new talent. NASCIO's CIO Survey consistently identifies workforce as a top constraint, and workforce and talent modernization scores 5 out of 5 for state government in the external trend heat map – the highest of any workforce-related trend in the state segment. A new and urgent dimension has emerged: the AI skills gap. As state agencies deploy AI tools, they need staff who can govern AI systems, validate model outputs, manage data pipelines, and maintain compliance with emerging AI legislation – skills that are scarce and expensive in today's labor market.
Why It Matters
Meet modern workforce expectations.
Offering flexible hiring and work models, agile governance structures, and cross-agency talent pools allows the public sector to remain competitive in the job market. These changes create a more attractive work environment and provide opportunities for skill growth and career advancement.
The Solution
Understand workforce trends and impacts.
Learn about IT workforce trends and their effects on the organization. Gauge the impact of these trends on specific capabilities to stay ahead of challenges and opportunities.
Provide training and meaningful projects.
Offer ongoing training and professional development, especially leadership programs. Assign IT professionals to challenging and meaningful projects that align with their interests to keep them engaged and motivated.
Implement flexible work arrangements and leadership programs.
Adopt flexible work arrangements, including remote work outside high-cost jurisdictions. Implement leadership programs that accelerate promotions for highly talented employees, focusing on skills and expertise rather than seniority, tenure, and formal education.
Manage valuable data assets
The Challenge
Bolster data management to power AI, analytics, and evidence-based policy.
The ability to strategically and effectively manage valuable data assets is challenging for governments. Ineffective data management leads to poor decisions, missed engagement opportunities, and critical cybersecurity risks. More acutely, it is the single biggest barrier to successful AI deployment – AI tools are only as good as the data they are trained on and operate from. Data and analytics modernization scores 5 out of 5 for state government in the external trend heat map. Federal interoperability mandates, including requirements tied to SNAP, Medicaid, and other federal programs, are also creating new urgency around clean, accessible, cross-agency data infrastructure.
Why It Matters
Empower data-driven decisions.
Proper data management ensures that government can leverage their data assets to enhance operational efficiency and service delivery. Effective data governance and management are crucial for making informed decisions, improving experiences, and mitigating cybersecurity risks.
The Solution
Align data management with strategic plans.
Ensure data initiatives support the broader objectives of the organization by aligning data management plans with agency requirements and strategic goals.
Create a collaborative plan.
Unite IT and the organization in managing data assets by developing a collaborative plan. This plan should be scalable and adaptable to evolving needs.
Identify gaps and implement corrective actions.
Perform data strategy planning to identify gaps in current data services and the supporting environment. Determine effective corrective actions to address these gaps and enhance data management practices.
Strengthen digital identity
The Challenge
Navigate growing complexity in digital identity, including mobile credentials and modern authentication.
Cybersecurity and identity are increasingly intertwined, requiring continuous control over data access, transaction authorization, and fraud prevention. The complexity of identity access management has grown with digital expansion and AI automation. New dimensions have emerged: mobile driver's license (mDL) adoption is accelerating across states following AAMVA guidance and TSA acceptance, creating new identity infrastructure requirements. FIDO2 passkey authentication is gaining traction as a replacement for password-based access in state portals, and REAL ID modernization continues to require state IT investment. The federal login.gov shared service offers states an interoperability pathway but requires integration planning and policy alignment.
Why It Matters
Build secure access management.
IAM is crucial for providing the right people with the right access at the right time, predicting their needs, and responding to inappropriate access. As more processes are moved to the cloud and face increasing security threats, a well-defined and well-documented IAM system is essential for usability and security.
The Solution
Centralize the IAM system and RBAC model.
Establish a centralized, effective, and efficient system for managing identity and access. By creating and implementing a role-based access control (RBAC) model, organizations can regain control of their IAM environment and simplify the auditing process.
Select and integrate vendors.
Select and implement IAM vendors by producing an RFP and shortlisting vendors that meet goals and compliance and integration needs. This approach will minimize entitlement sprawl and ensure seamless integration with various cloud vendors.
Continuously improve and educate.
Educate stakeholders on best practices for IAM, helping to adopt multifactor authentication and other necessary capabilities. This will enhance security and efficiency in managing digital identities.
Enhance application portfolio management
The Challenge
Modernize legacy systems amid rapid IT evolution.
The rapid evolution of information technology and the proliferation of digital technologies have changed constituents' expectations for service delivery. However, governments continue to rely on aging, complex, and unstable legacy systems, which are increasingly at risk of failure and cyberattacks.
Why It Matters
Improve satisfaction with digital services.
Constituents desire more digital services but are often dissatisfied with their quality and effectiveness. Public sector IT faces barriers such as misalignment of modernization policies, underinvestment in core applications, competing priorities, lack of application health knowledge, and informal processes.
The Solution
Prioritize continuous modernization and rationalization.
Prioritize continuous modernization and rationalization of the application portfolio. This involves shifting the focus from technical issues to value-added impacts on programs and services.
Empower application portfolio management leads.
Enable application portfolio management leads to quickly identify and address issues, and make a compelling case for the value of applications and investments to decision-makers. This empowerment is crucial for proactive management and effective communication.
Create business-focused views.
Create views of applications that focus on specific business capabilities, programs, and services before addressing back-end or technical issues. This approach ensures that modernization efforts are aligned with organizational goals and priorities.
Master adaptive delivery
The Challenge
Embrace Agile transformations.
Most state organizations need support when starting out with Agile, DevOps, and product-centric delivery of digital platforms since transformations are difficult and complex to achieve. Many organizations that follow Scrum "by the book" often clash with reality, requiring an improvised approach for large, complex, and federated public services.
Why It Matters
The success of Agile transformations.
Adaptive delivery is difficult to master, with research showing that there are over 30 common challenges that organizations need to overcome for Agile to be successful (Journal of Systems and Software). Nearly half of all Agile transformations fail (Scrum Inc.), yet Agile projects are three times more likely to succeed than Waterfall projects (The Standish Group).
The Solution
Access real-time troubleshooting and expert guidance.
Harness the combined power of research and experience to troubleshoot adaptive delivery challenges in real time. Leverage a holistic relationship with a dedicated Agile mentor to provide expert guidance.
Assess and improve skills.
Assess Agile, DevOps, and product skills and practices to find ways to improve them. Solve problems faster with solutions that last by creating guardrails that will work in a government organization.
Develop an Agile mindset.
See past the dogma to develop an Agile mindset and approach, applicable in the context of public sector funding, procurement, and project management standards and policies. This mindset will help navigate the complexities of adaptive delivery and ensure successful transformations.
Transform the CIO role
The Challenge
Navigate growing complexity in government IT leadership as the CIO role evolves alongside new peers.
Government service delivery is inherently complex due to the involvement of multiple departments, agencies, and systems operating with limited resources. This results in numerous touchpoints and coordination requirements that make effective IT leadership challenging. The CIO role itself is also evolving rapidly: many state governments have introduced Chief Data Officers (CDOs) and Chief AI Officers (CAIOs) to manage emerging technology domains, requiring the CIO to redefine scope and build collaborative relationships with these new peers. Accenture's Technology Vision for Government highlights platform orchestration and ecosystem brokerage as the defining capabilities of the next-generation public sector technology leader. CIOs who can operate as brokers – sourcing services from vendors, shared services, and agency partners – will be most effective in the fragmented, federated environment of state government.
Why It Matters
Enhance efficiency and collaboration.
The CIO as a broker promotes collaboration, efficiency, and effectiveness in IT management. This role ensures technology supports the mission and enhances service delivery, ultimately benefiting constituents.
The Solution
Build strategic alignment and vendor management.
Ensure IT initiatives align with organizational objectives and oversee vendor relationships to maintain compliance with regulations and standards.
Collaborate and integrate.
Facilitate collaboration among government agencies and integrate IT services from various sources to create seamless solutions. This integration promotes interoperability and efficiency in IT initiatives.
Manage risks and foster innovation.
Assess and manage IT risks, including cybersecurity and data privacy, while fostering innovation by adopting emerging technologies and best practices. This proactive approach ensures smooth IT operations and continuous improvement in government services.
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