Digital transformation applies new and emerging digital technologies to innovate services and businesses across sectors. Though it is more often thought of in terms of how it supports consumers and products, digital transformation also provides substantial opportunities to improve current public safety issues.
At the same time, it creates challenges. Continued innovations push the boundaries of the existing approaches. The public cloud, mobile devices with access to critical information and enhanced digital security have been digital transformation applications with potential enormous impacts.
By transforming their technology to be more agile, secure and innovative, they can evolve operations to improve public safety.
Public safety challenges for governments
As the shift toward digitization continues, public safety agents must monitor the virtual space.
Given the lightning-fast pace of technological change in public safety, cyber security is a growing concern. Forbes expected cyber security spending to soar past $123 billion in 2020. Business continuity, communication and security are among the most significant challenges to current public safety issues, and they are often exacerbated by insufficient security monitoring and threat detection. Improved collaboration between security agents, company leaders and CEOs is key to securing public safety.
Digital transformation as a solution
Though some aspects of digital transformation—such as an expanded attack surface due to the proliferation of devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT)—can introduce new risks to current public safety issues, digital transformation also provides new solutions to some common problems.
More digitization means more data—which means that safety officials can make better decisions about where they need to improve public safety. IoT devices collect and generate huge volumes of data; artificial intelligence and machine learning, powered by 5G, can analyze that data to unearth insights that support strategic public safety decisions.
Edge computing solutions, also made more viable by 5G's capabilities, can transform public safety by moving critical communications—whether between first responders or between officials and constituents—closer to the people who need them.
A data-centric approach to public safety can help overcome traditional public safety challenges by helping municipalities predict and prevent issues. And the rapidly expanding public cloud stores backup data and helps subvert attacks.
In theory, these solutions solve critical challenges. But how can you ensure they work in practice?
Deployment considerations and managed service providers
Prediction and preparation are always the best practices when seeking to improve current public safety issues through digital transformation. But addressing public safety challenges is not always as simple as rolling out a new digital tool.
A managed services partner can help the entire integration team by deploying an elegant solution to the problem based on the team's collective experience. It can also help develop cost-effective solutions to pivot to a preventive approach.
Discover how you can ready your department to deploy public safety solutions.