It's no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) has become a part of our daily lives. Every day, more stories on AI flood our newsfeeds. From criticism to hype, the commentary runs the gamut from the enormous potential of AI to transform society to fears about machine intelligence outperforming humans. AI's potential to drive change at an increasingly rapid pace is worth discussing, especially for government agencies facing significant workforce gaps.
Is AI in government the future?
The public's expectations for government interaction and transparency are higher than ever. Residents and government employees alike want experiences that rival what they find in the private sector: a constituent-centric, omnichannel approach that delivers access to services and information tailored for them.
As public expectations rise, government organizations must find new ways to meet these demands. Newly emerging AI efficiency tools can help deliver this experience.
How can AI be used in government sectors?
Determining how to meaningfully incorporate this technology into your governmental organization can feel daunting. With this in mind, let's look at practical applications of AI and how organizations can leverage the technology to do more with less while increasing accuracy and gaining new insights.
5 ways AI can benefit government agencies:
- Improved citizen services: AI virtual assistants and chatbots can provide 24/7 support for various government inquiries, including taxes, unemployment benefits and public services.
- Operational efficiency: AI and RPA help agencies handle high-volume document processing and reduce manual workloads.
- Enhanced fraud detection: AI is efficient in analyzing large data sets to identify tax filing, payment and procurement anomalies, helping agencies move away from reactive to proactive fraud prevention.
- Data-driven decision-making: Productive AI technology lets government organizations replace guesswork with empirical, predictive evidence to optimize resources, solve community challenges as they arise and increase civic trust.
- Strengthened cybersecurity: AI can help protect critical infrastructure and strengthen privacy by detecting and responding to threats faster than traditional methods.
AI and operational efficiency in government
Operational efficiency is a hot topic in every industry—government is no exception. If you want to maximize the value and productivity of your agency while minimizing resources and waste, you’ll need a little help. When you invest in AI for operational efficiency and streamless and automated processes and services, doing more with less is possible.
How has AI already become an integrated part of our daily lives?
While it often conjures up images of a futuristic world ruled by robot overlords, AI has been a part of our lives for decades. The first artificial intelligence program was developed in the 1950s. Still, the exponential increases in computing power and the ability to retain and quickly access huge volumes of data have made AI a practical reality. In fact, you've likely been using what can be considered AI for years.
Do you look for a chatbot first instead of calling a customer service center for support? What about utilizing AI when you're driving? As many states now require hands-free operation of cell phones in vehicles, using voice assistants has become commonplace: "Hey, Alexa, play my soundtrack!" Did you know Microsoft Word's predictive text and Google Translate also leverage AI technology?
Artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing have all become mainstays of efficiency in our everyday personal lives. It’s high time we embrace these technologies to transform how we work as well.
How can AI help close the talent gap in government?
During my twenty-plus years in state government, we witnessed a gradual reduction in our workforce. In recent years, our staffing challenges have been less about budget constraints and more about the inability to find and attract talent. Between accelerating technology, aging workforces, and high experience requirements, government organizations are finding it harder and harder to retain and hire the right kind of employees. Nonetheless, the mandates and work continued to grow.
The pandemic brought even more demands on the government, especially the need to deliver more digital-forward citizen services. When faced with unfilled positions amid an ever-growing workload, the question became "What solutions can organizations leverage to overcome this challenge?" Along one path lies the potential to harness automation and AI.
When we implement AI into government, we are able to augment workflows and automate routine tasks to help agencies maintain service levels even in the face of hiring freezes and workforce shortages. While it’s never meant to fully replace human workers, government AI technology can take on low-value work and free up time for staff to tackle bigger challenges. Existing employees can also benefit from access to AI-enabled platforms that provide personalized training to close specific skill gaps and bolster the talents of your team.
How embracing technology helps to achieve more with less
When calls from the public to various agencies exploded at the beginning of the pandemic, we rapidly implemented solutions for contact centers such as virtual agents, intelligent call routing, callback queues and analytics. Chatbots also offered agencies the capability to provide their constituents with a simple path to answers without scouring the website or trying to connect with a live person.
This type of technology enabled agencies to have the flexibility to implement AI at a level that worked for them. Organizations could utilize basic Q&A functionality or implement a more in-depth experience to enable constituent-specific inquiries.
This efficient AI technology provides a better digital experience, around-the-clock services and multilingual support for a diverse group of users. For the government, AI is a force multiplier, delivering improved constituent service and saving employee time for more critical or complex work.
What is RPA?
Another simple and effective approach to leveraging efficient AI is by automating repetitive tasks with robotic process automation (RPA). RPA software mimics human actions to interact with a system or application. Just like we can navigate a system and its various screens, fill in forms or move files, bots can do the same work faster and with fewer errors.
How does RPA benefit government agencies?
In government, finance departments are prime opportunities for RPA. We can automate account reconciliations, perform two- and three-way invoice matches, generate invoices, flag potential errors or omissions and many other possibilities.
Automating high-volume, standardized transactions can not only free up staff time but also increase the accuracy of transactions. Any process that involves repetitive, rules-based activities is a good candidate for RPA.
Utilizing data-driven AI for efficiency
Government entities have more data than ever and can utilize AI to drive innovation and enable data-driven insights and decision-making. AI technologies can automate reports and leverage analytics to predict trends, analyze variances and flag potential errors or policy violations, including in real-time during data entry to prevent those errors before they happen.
AI is also a productivity booster and implementing these tools helps save staff time. Creating a better user experience through virtual assistants that understand natural language can quickly return relevant user guides and video tutorials and even enable review, entry and approval of transactions right from the chat window. This lets your employees to focus their efforts on more complex issues.
Similarly, a public-facing virtual assistant can help constituents navigate government processes for renewing a license or filing and paying taxes. Plenty of citizens have spent hours scouring websites to try to find the correct form or guide. If they had access to a virtual assistant, they’d have a resource to ask for help and cut down on time wasted.
Does generative AI have a role in government efficiency?
Finally, we can't have a conversation on AI without touching on generative AI. A subset of artificial intelligence, generative tools create new content, such as text, image or audio, in response to user prompts. Until recently, most AI assisted with efficient usage or better insight into our data. Generative AI delivers the possibility to create new original information or content.
Many people believe that generative AI technology has the potential to transform our lives, but we’d be remiss to ignore that it also raises ethical, transparency and data privacy issues that need to be addressed.
Many organizations are exploring the possibilities of generative AI with caution. They are utilizing it to jump-start activities such as writing job descriptions, vacancy postings or solicitations for goods or services. Overall, generative AI has the potential to help government entities save time and work more efficiently.
Explore the future of governmental AI and constituent interaction
The public's expectations for a simple digital user experience will continue to increase even as government workforce challenges remain. This dichotomy makes the legacy model of primarily serving the public in siloed teams at brick-and-mortar locations unsustainable. Government organizations have the imperative and the public desire to enable a modern, digital AI-powered government. Constituents do not want to figure out which division of an agency they need to find to get the requirements for a business license or apply for a grant or aid.
The constituent experience of the future should include quick and easy online search capabilities and let residents log in to access all the services and applications they utilize on a personalized dashboard. Efficient AI technologies can even recommend additional services constituents may find of interest. Furthermore, proactive notifications and reminders will round out the constituent digital experience, enabling all government interactions to be conducted virtually if desired.
Many pro-AI government leaders have confirmed that a modern and simplified constituent experience is high on their priority list. Still, it can be challenging to embark on such initiatives with competing workloads and ongoing workforce shortages. AI-powered technologies such as RPA, chatbots, virtual agents and analytics can help deliver those goals.
Introducing AI to government agencies
Implementing AI won’t lead to productivity and efficiency overnight. A successful rollout takes time—especially when it’s in a large-scale setting, like a government agency. The next time you and your team meet to discuss incorporating AI into your workplace, make sure you understand each step of the process, from setting strict ethical guardrails to executing controlled pilot programs and beyond.
A 5-step guide to implementing AI into government:
Step 1. Establish governance: Before launching any productive AI project, establish policies that mandate transparency, fairness and accountability. Bring together leaders from all involved departments and create a set of boundaries to ensure algorithms remain unbiased, privacy remains protected and everything adheres to strict data compliance laws.
Step 2. Evaluate readiness: Without high-quality data, even the most efficient AI projects are likely to fail. Make sure to audit existing legacy systems to sense whether data is clean, localized and securely stored. Then, streamline the process by transitioning to a cloud-native architecture so different departments are able to share data without duplication.
Step 3. Define use cases: Start by identifying specific operational bottlenecks, such as analyzing public sentiment or summarizing meeting notes. These smaller scenarios, known as use cases, will be where you test initial AI tools in low-risk, internal environments before rolling out enterprise-wide solutions.
Step 4. Build workforce capacity: Once you’re more secure on how AI can be productive for your agency, you’ll need to train the staff on how to use, prompt and evaluate this technology. Providing this specialized training to your existing employees will also help mitigate concerns about AI taking over human jobs.
Step 5. Monitor, evaluate, scale: After your initial pilot project is completed, you can project data on how well the AI performed, adjusting parameters accordingly. Once the feedback loop is established, you can continue with widespread scaling.
Partnering with a consultant firm for government AI rollout
Taking on such an important task for your state or federal government is no small job. Rather than adding more to your plate, consider outsourcing to a third-party consulting firm. With years of experience and access to all the latest productive AI technology, CGI consultants help make the transition to AI operational efficiency seamless.
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About this author
Jennifer Ricker
Vice-President, Consulting Expert
As Vice President for CGI Government Solutions, Jennifer leads the strategy and execution of customer experience to ensure success for public sector clients. Before joining CGI, Jennifer spent 24 years in state government, most recently serving as State CIO and Secretary of the Illinois Department ...
