Content Buyer Market Profile: Government

The government sector offers a variety of unique content management opportunities for vendors as well as information professionals. In addition to the information needs presented by their governmental function (legislative, judicial, and regulatory activities), many government units are involved in R&D, serve citizens with information needs, function as an archive of record for certain kinds of content, and are heavily involved in the education market. This Briefing identifies the drivers of content use in the government sector, and some of the trends currently shaping its direction. Drawing on Outsell industry benchmarking studies and data on thousands of end users, it analyzes the sector's content spending levels and trends in the use of digital content, user behaviors, content vendor relations, and content management practices. Drivers highlighted include records management and public access directives, the FAIR Act's encouragement of outsourcing non-governmental functions, and the overall decline in funding in many government units. Trends include the continued strength of R&D as a driver of content access by government users, the lack of coherent document management systems, the effect of an aging government workforce, and the slow penetration into external end-user markets. The Briefing includes a table of government sector metrics, key end-user data on spending and preferences, and trends and metrics for information management practices in the sector. For commercial content vendors, the Briefing identifies the challenges and opportunities inherent in reaching and serving public-sector customers. For government information managers, it urges use of the FAIR Act standards to outsource certain low-value-add functions as a way to deal with funding issues and focus on more visible, externally oriented activities.