Intelligent Automation for Citizen Purposes
The overall experience with government-related companies or
agencies in the 21st century, whether it be renewing a driver’s license or
engaging with the elected representatives, has a lack of modernity. Lack of
modernity paired with trends of political distrust translates into very low
citizen satisfaction - Citizens even ranks government services below the
maligned cable-TV customer services. Artificial intelligence is an area of
opportunity that government agencies can actively anticipate and plan for when
upgrading their legacy systems.
Of the $90 billion dollars the federal government spends on
technology, 75% is spent on maintaining legacy systems. Outdated systems are
matched with administrative burdens and backlogs across government. Governing
Magazine found that 53% of state and local officials surveyed had excessive
paperwork burdens that impacted their ability to get work done.
Citizens today want a more digital government, according to
a survey conducted by Accenture. Only 27% of U.S. citizens reported
satisfaction with the current level of government digital offerings, and 92%
said that “improved digital services would positively impact their view of the
government.”
AI applications for citizen services could reduce costs.
Deloitte estimates that automation of federal government employee tasks could
save between 96.7 million and 1.2 bullion hours annually, with potential
savings between #3.3 billion and $41.1 billion annually.
Across the globe, government offices are testing
applications of AI for customer services. It can drastically improve citizen
access to real-time answers, and could even be used to formulate and fill out
documents especially for routine tasks. “Enabling government workers to spend
more time address citizen needs with the help of AO could potentially help
humanize workers and foster a better relationships between government employees
and citizens, even if it is virtual,” said Ben Hecht, President and CEO of
Living Cities.
AI is not new to the government. In the 1990’s, machine
vision methods were used to recognize handwriting envelopes to automatically
route letters – saving hundreds of millions of dollars for the US Postal
Service. More recently, artificial intelligence was the subject of two in-depth
reports published under President Barack Obama and of a US Senate hearing on
potential applications of AI and its impact on the economy. So, why is it that
the US government is so behind on its application?
While the government is behind in its intelligent automation
application, it’s clear that it will be adopted and applied in the near future
in order to be competitive.
Learn the latest
information on Process Automation in Government at our event held in Washington
D.C. on May 29th. Access the full agenda: http://bit.ly/2SZHAnB