AI, the new Public Service

THE SYSTEM IS OUT TO GET YOU! On your path you will trip, you will fall. You will scream and curse. But, you will need to get back up and try again. You have no choice, it's legislation - oh, and congratulations on the birth of Jenny - was it - your new baby!

What a way to introduce you to your parenting journey. A beautiful gift of disconnected bureaucracy wrapped up thoroughly in a bow of rampant Red Tape.

The Public Services is full of great people who want to do the best they can for the engine of their country. The challenges are the tools, policies and legislation they have to support them are 20th Century and not taking advantage of modern possibilities.

This bureaucracy is not intentionally malicious, disconnected, or targeting you. This bureaucracy is a result of siloed growth over a long time. This has produced a lack of end-to-end visibility, responsibility and delegated authority.

Historically, the engine of Government exists to serve government structures and support the implementation, running, and fulfilment of Legislation. It is focused on the needs of the system and still doing this with last century's thinking about what is possible.

When you look at the engine of Government you see Agencies. When they act, they mostly act as individual agencies - that is what they are empowered to do.

The bureaucracy grew as and when required. A siloed, focused growth, by different groups over the decades. This has kept the short-term costs down, but left us with long-term pain and long-term national technology and bureaucracy debt. No understanding of the history of your need, no concept of predicting your future demand - you know I am over-simplifying for effect here!

What would it be like if it focused on us?

Imagine the engine of Government understanding what you need. Imagine the engine of Government proactively sorting things for you. Imagine the engine of Government making it easy for you to get what you need.

Imagine the engine of Government understanding what you need.

"Congratulations on the birth of baby Jenny. This is how we can help. We've already done all this and just need to hear from you on that, from there we can present you with the other!

Oh, and by the way, this is everything you need to be doing for now - simple and all in one place. Again, Congratulations!"

In the past, the system did not have the tools to cost-effectively personalise our engagement. Thus, I need to remember, I get penalised when I forget, and I have to work out the combination of agencies to talk to for each transaction. I don't know about you, but that's not a lot of fun.

I am more than just a number, more than a series of disconnected transactions within the engine of Government. We don't need to run things like this anymore - we have the power to upgrade the system's engine!

What would it be like if it understood your situation?

Imagine the engine of Government understanding your situation. Imagine the engine of Government remembering you. Imagine the engine of Government proactively sorting things out for you.

"Hello again, Jenny is turning four soon, Happy Birthday! We'd like to help her begin her life of learning with…"

"Jenny has her restricted license now. Here are some interesting services in your area that she could use to assist with the next step on her driving journey."

"Hi, Jenny, I'm a Bot, and here to help. So you'd like a passport, that is a straightforward process, let me help you. We can pre-populate a lot of the information needed from information in your driver's license data. I just need your permission to gather this…"

You are more than just a number.

The Road Ahead with AI

Yes, there is history and legacy to deal with and this will not happen overnight, but there is motivation in the halls of government, and now cost-effective technical capabilities, to change things up. Public Servants are citizens too.

The evolution of our engagement with social networks has shown us what should be possible in our interactions with the Government and we want more. We can be engaged with by institutions in a personalised way. You can be seen, understood, and approached as a joined-up person rather than a series of transactions or unrelated collections of data in individual agencies.

We've seen that the tools are in place to make this real, big data sets, AI, and the enabling Cloud platforms give us:

• The ability to safely join up the masses of information to allow a citizen to engage with Government in a way that makes sense to the citizen, while still supporting the agency needs.
• The intelligence to simplify things - across agency boundaries - for each individual citizen, to see us as a person, and allow agencies to be proactive in their support.
• The cloud platform computing power and storage capacity necessary for the AI to support this.

It's more than a Tech change

This engagement evolution is a collaboration, an expansion, a new empowering of our human Public Service and us citizens - it is NOT an abdication or substitute. And we in technology must support this.

The engine of Government can be upgraded. This engagement evolution effort needs more than a technology upgrade. We are removing bureaucracy debt as well as technology debt. It must include:

• Change in thinking (citizen at the heart and there is value to us to be seen as joined up),
• Change in policy (seeing us as whole individuals - welcome to the cross-agency platform era),
• The resulting change in legislation (enabling the safe citizen-centric joined up engagement across agencies).

These make up the real evolution - the tech is just an enabler. And there are real and imagined risks in the change.

The news has shown us that AI, Cloud platforms, and big data sets used in isolation of policy leads to abuse - intentional or otherwise.

We need to talk. To have a conversation and, as a nation, agree on frameworks for how this upgrade can be done ethically, transparently, and with accountability (Microsoft has started this conversation in the free books The Future Computed and A Cloud for Global Good)

This is a conversation for all of us - I'm having it with Public Servants and citizens daily these days. There is a way forward, the capabilities are real today.

Let's get this conversation started - tell me in the comments, do you agree? Whether you agree or disagree with what I am saying, we need to talk.

The System can be humanised and the path to travel made safe, smooth and straight for us to walk - safe enough for baby Jenny.

Image by Gerd Altmann: Pixabay