The Impact Of AI On The Public Sector

When it comes to enhancement and empowerment by AI, the public sector stands equally influenced. For the unversed, public sectors include public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infrastructure, public transit, public education, along with health care and those working for the government itself. The public sector can significantly increase its effectiveness and efficiency with the incorporation of AI solutions through three main cross-cutting application domains: streamlining of internal operations, improvement of quality in the provision of public services to citizens and companies and, contribution to the creation of an ecosystem in which technology-based companies can flourish in the field of AI.

According to Accenture, 92% of US citizens report that improved digital services would positively impact their view of government. Thus, public sector organizations see digital as a top priority. Recently, Danish architecture firm BIG and Chinese tech company Terminus revealed their plans to build an “AI City” project named Cloud Valley in the south-western Chinese city of Chongqing. Additionally, the COVID-19 crisis has sped up the adoption of AI in the sector. By pushing processes, people and services online, it’s forced local, regional and national governments to lead by example.

In a few short months, they have:

• Digitized on a scale and at a pace that might have seemed impossible before
• Learnt to manage remote workforces
• Worked with the private sector to close skills gaps and develop innovative solutions
• Used AI as a key weapon in the fight against the virus – from educating the public and screening patients to tracking and tracing contacts.

Chatbots - Chatbots are in, and major technology companies like Facebook are betting big on their ability to reduce complexities, augment self-service and scale. The primary purpose to do so is to transform their service delivery. It can reduce the work load of employees to a large extent and save human effort from doing mundane tasks. Employees can focus more on technical and nuanced tasks. Additionally, the Government can also use Chatbots for helping citizens through text based messages. These can be in the form of answers to frequently asked questions. For example, citizens can message to ask questions about their billing information or to seek help to complete their tax transactions. In the Australian taxation office, a chatbot has had more than 3 million conversations and has been able to resolve 88% of queries on first contact.

Perform Mission-Critical Tasks - In government agencies like the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), AI can support critical capabilities. These include improving situational awareness and decision-making; increasing the safety of equipment like aircraft, ships, and vehicles in dangerous situations; and predicting when critical parts will fail, automating diagnosis, and planning maintenance. AI also helps improve the nautical, terrain, and aeronautical charting vital to DoD missions, helping enable safe and precise navigation and better surveillance.

Sensors - The use of real time sensors and cameras can help the public sector in a number of ways. For example, it can help with smarter management of traffic with predicting traffic flows, optimizing traffic light timing, and gaining insights into public transport and directing people to ride sharing.

Data Analytics - Health Departments have been using data analytics to have optimized medical emergency responses. It can help make a decision related to if a patient to be treated on-site or be taken to the hospital. Such insights have helped reduce the running around for emergency response teams.

Drones - Some cities in the US are already using drones to deliver pizzas and courier parcels. The Government is planning to use the drones for public security. AI systems can pull data from surveillance cameras, drones can help to detect anomalies that point to a possible crime, and help in more predictive policing. AI can also, in the future, help the police manage crime scenes with smart tools to prioritize tasks and allocate resources.

Identifying fraudulent benefits claims - Fraudulent claims cost governments billions. For instance, it is expected that £1.5bn may have been lost in fraudulent claims for Universal Credit in the UK after the coronavirus pandemic. AI-powered fraud detection can enable governments to track down large-scale corruption of the benefit and welfare programs by identifying patterns in claims such as the same phone number or applications written in the same style and processing social media profiles to check if there are any conflicting information compared to the applications.

Tracking disease spreads - AI can be used for preventing disease spread. To do this, there are two types of AI applications, which are (i) building a machine learning algorithm that cross-checks patients with similar symptoms from different locations, detects patterns, and warns when an outbreak might occur and (ii) using graph analytics, as in the case of China during COVID-19, to identify contacts with a known carrier of the virus.

Personalized education - Machine learning algorithms can help provide personalized education irrespective of the number of students. AI can analyze students’ progress and find inconsistencies between what is taught and what is not yet understood. At the University of Michigan, students receive immediate feedback on their writing, even in large classes, thanks to AI. Automated text analysis reviews students’ work to identify strengths and recommend revisions.

What’s Next?

AI is already delivering benefits beyond process optimization with the potential to deliver better public services and tackle long-term global challenges. Senior leadership support, structured approach and an experimental mindset hold the key to embedding AI at scale. 

AI isn’t a technology of the future — it’s here now and can’t be put off until tomorrow. The sooner government organizations embrace artificial intelligence, the sooner they will become more cost efficient and increase citizen satisfaction. As the digital state becomes a reality, it’ll be the job of governments to make sure their employees have the skills, mindset and connectivity to thrive, including those working remotely. Likewise, they’ll need to upskill citizens to get the most from digital public services and the wider digital economy. And they’ll need to keep working with the private sector to share knowledge and innovate.