From undetected rogue email servers to numerous breaches, including to the OPM, the government has had a tough year. Factor in the many outdated systems still being used to drive our country and it makes for a terrifying story. While some might argue that the sheer size of the government makes managing tech systems daunting, it is a task that is imperative to both our national and personal security, as well as for supporting fully digital end-to-end citizen services.

According to Gartner, public sector technology spending is expected to remain flat in 2016, following a 5.2 percent decrease in 2015. The "do more with less" motto that picked up so much steam during the Great Recession has left a chasm between where we are and where we need to be. Government CIOs are under great pressure to optimize IT and digitally transform their organizations, but are fighting "organizational and cultural challenges that are barriers to harnessing the synergistic potential of social, mobile, data analytics, cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) to drive transformational change."

To enable government transformation initiatives, Gartner has identified the top 10 strategic technologies in 2016 and provided recommendations to CIOs and IT leaders regarding adoption and benefits.