Overseeing IT for the Human Resources department of the nation's most populous county is no small task. Analytics, predictive modeling and digital workspaces are essential concepts when your job is managing the technology that serves the 100,000-plus employees who work for Los Angeles County government. That's the challenge that the department's assistant director and CIO, Murtaza Masood, faces every day.
Masood, whose department has been covered in Techwire previously, was asked to assess the confluence of people, government and technology as we head into the new year. Here is his outlook:
It is an exciting time for human resources technology.
The rise of HR cloud and best-of-breed offerings for government HR provide a unique opportunity for agencies to leapfrog in our innovation cycles. The new year brings a renewed focus on continued migration to the HR cloud, whether it be for a unified learning and performance management solution, recruiting and selection management platform, or succession planning software.
The marketplace has undergone a maturity cycle, and smart platform choices can be made to shed aging enterprise applications in these areas. A challenge for HR business and IT stakeholders will be to leverage the data residing in the various cloud platforms to provide service-level and engagement analytics for public applicants, employees and management.
Public-sector HR organizations are undergoing an acceleration in automation to provide self-service digital solutions and replace onerous transactional HR applications. Case management solutions see continued adoption to optimize HR analysts' time and enhance the employee experience. New digital workspaces are making the workforce agile, responsive and productive on demand. Employee expectations, rapidly evolving technology and mobile applications will continue to propel this trend well into future years.
People analytics will see an expansion in adoption as the public sector deals with macro HR trends. Recruiting, developing and retaining an evolving workforce requires real-time analytics for decision-makers to allocate resources, including training and positions, to areas of greatest impact. HR business groups will demand single-pane-of-glass solutions that provide holistic insights throughout the employee life cycle. HR analytics and predictive modeling will continue to be the centerpiece for employee engagement solutions, integrated with social media presence and outreach.
Artificial intelligence will begin to play a transformative role in government HR by providing innovative solutions like digital assistants for employees to plan and facilitate their workday or interactive customer agents providing a tailored experiences for the public.
Innovation and automation will continue into the next few years, helping government agencies transform their HR service delivery and develop the workforce.
