While government technology executives see IT innovation, including the use of RFID technologies, as being critical to achieving their organisational strategies, very few have actually deployed the technology, according to a survey and report by BearingPoint, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) and Federal Computer Week magazine.

     The report highlighted the fact that, while most survey respondents said they view RFID as an emerging technology that will improve government processes and are investigating application opportunities for RFID, few have gone as far as deploying the technology. 116.30.147.133 This article is copyright 2004 UsingRFID.com.

Survey responses also indicated that applications for RFID technologies within government organisations are many and varied. In addition to homeland security applications, asset visibility, business process and productivity improvements were seen as key areas for utilising RFID technology.

     Despite the recognised potential benefits associated with RFID technologies, more than 50% of respondents indicated that the absence of guidance from government and industry around security & privacy policies and standards was resulting in their deferring further development activity. Other barriers to deploying the technology that government respondents identified included a lack of funding, government-wide adoption, and intra-government coordination.

     "At this stage in adoption, we weren''t surprised to see that most respondents indicated they would spend less than US$250,000 on RFID projects in the 2005 financial year, and less than US$1 million in each financial year from 2006 to 2008, which is consistent with what we are hearing through our work chairing ITAA''s RFID Standards Task Group," said Nick Evans, global lead with BearingPoint''s Emerging Technology practice.

     "The positive news is that respondents do indeed see the value that RFID can bring to their organisations and, once these typical barriers to adoption have been overcome, we can expect to see a wide variety of applications successfully deployed," added Evans.

     Another encouraging finding of the survey was a broad agreement among government executives that IT innovation continues to add significant value to their organisations. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they consider IT innovation to be "important" or "very important" to executing their organisation''s business strategies.

     The survey also found that 31% of government annual IT budgets are directed toward IT innovation including new initiatives such as RFID, rather than IT commoditisation or managing and maintaining existing systems.

     "The survey shows that most government IT executives believe that RFID can help their agencies carry out their missions more effectively," explained John Monroe, editor for Federal Computer Week. "There are still questions that need to be answered but IT executives generally believe that the potential of RFID makes it worth the time, energy, and effort to invest in and learn more about the technology."

     According to Harris N. Miller (president for the ITAA), near-term obstacles aside, RFID is expected to become the heart of inventory and supply chain management technology for large enterprises of all kinds, including government agencies. The technology industry is already grappling with the challenges presented by a lack of established global standards and concerns over privacy, and is now fine-tuning solutions accordingly. It is also encouraging that the RFID industry now seems to be working at educating consumers and RFID users about the various misunderstandings that lead to privacy concerns, and the safeguards that are being devised and implemented to eliminate opportunities for the technology to be misused or abused.

     The survey report also noted that 48% of respondents described RFID specifically as important or very important to their business strategy, with only 15% describing it as unimportant or very unimportant. Likewise, an encouraging 56% described RFID as an emerging technology that would improve government processes, while 48% indicated that their government organisation had investigated RFID, but only 16% had actually deployed the technology in any way.

     Jointly conducted by business consulting and systems integration firm BearingPoint, ITAA and Federal Computer Week magazine, the survey of more than 170 global government executives was fielded from mid-September to mid-October 2004. The survey was developed to reveal drivers and barriers for the governmental adoption of RFID technology, and to identify the applications viewed as offering the greatest potential for benefit and return on investment.

 

 

 

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