The US federal government recommends that agencies harness AI—securely—to increase innovation and productivity and improve the citizen experience. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) found hundreds of AI use cases already implemented at government agencies, and over a thousand more planned use cases that can benefit from the application of AI.
One impactful place government agencies can add AI is in their case management processes—reason being, there are so many applications of complex case management in government. Cases span everything from issuing building and restaurant permits to collecting evidence for prosecuting criminals to determining food and drug safety. They involve multiple steps, documents, and stakeholders such as approvers.
Examples of AI enhancement in government case management
There are many ways AI can improve government case management processes. Examples include:
Automating routine tasks to increase efficiency
Analyzing large datasets to identify patterns and trends for better decision-making
Summarizing information from multiple documents
Filing documents in the appropriate systems or folders
Providing predictive analytics to anticipate and address potential issues proactively
AI capabilities often depend on a large language model (LLM), an advanced AI system that can understand, analyze, interpret, and generate human language. It uses deep learning techniques to predict and produce coherent text based on input prompts.
A large language model trained on government agency data is capable of tasks like text extraction, translation, summarization, and conversational responses. It facilitates intuitive interactions with data or documents through natural language queries, so users can ask questions through chat and receive answers based on the data. Think of it like talking to your data or talking to your documents.
The applications of AI in government casework are limitless
A few examples of AI in government casework include:
Fraud detection. AI can analyze vast amounts of data from financial transactions and social services applications to detect patterns indicative of fraudulent activity, helping government agencies prevent and address fraud more effectively.
Public service chatbots. AI-powered chatbots can assist citizens by providing quick responses to common queries, guiding them through application processes, and offering support services 24/7, improving accessibility and reducing the workload on government employees.
Procurement. AI applications include forecasting demand, detecting anomalies in bids and contracts, evaluating risks, improving vendor communications, analyzing performance metrics, and much more.
Resource allocation. AI can help in the efficient allocation of resources by analyzing data to predict areas of high demand for public services, such as healthcare or law enforcement response, ensuring that resources are directed where they are most needed.
Legal research and analysis. Natural language processing algorithms can sift through legal databases to identify relevant precedents, statutes, and regulations, thereby streamlining the legal review process and improving accuracy.
Environmental monitoring and management. AI technologies such as satellite imagery analysis and sensor networks can be used for environmental monitoring and management by tracking changes in land use, air quality, water pollution, and biodiversity. This data can inform policy decisions, support environmental assessments, and facilitate early warning systems for natural disasters.
Private AI: the safe and secure way to employ AI in government
While AI can certainly enhance efficiencies, using AI in government agency workflows raises significant privacy and security concerns. Ensuring that data remains confidential and is handled in a way that is compliant with regulations and policies is crucial to maintaining public trust and national security. But passing government data to public AI engines runs the risk of exposing sensitive information.
Public AI engines use all available data for training, meaning that if government data is available to them, it could become part of the training set, potentially exposing sensitive information and compromising privacy and security. This underscores the importance of using private AI models to ensure government data remains confidential and protected.
Appian has addressed these concerns in its Case Management Studio for Public Sector solution. It uses a private AI model to ensure that data remains proprietary. It keeps the data securely within the organization's own systems, without sharing it externally. Instead of sending data to a central server, the model is trained directly on the organization's data, allowing that organization to retain full control and ownership over their sensitive information and safeguarding proprietary data from unauthorized access or exposure.
Through a strategic collaboration with AWS leveraging Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, Appian is able to host large language models within customer compliance boundaries on the Appian Platform. This ensures that data remains secure and enables Appian customers to create and train proprietary AI models. And the AI features inherent in AWS GovCloud enable the rapid deployment of AI capabilities.
