b'ViewpointsNew Applications data intensive applications that can benefit from AI. Government has made recent and significant progress inSimilarly, the Financial Management for the Future 10report building networks of practitioners interested in collaboratingfinds that development of RPA applications alongside AI can across a broad suite of emerging technologies. Within thedrive advanced analytics through intelligent automationgovernment, new communities of practice have advancedenabling government digital workers who work in anaround RPA and AI. In addition, government-industryopen eco-system as part of an orchestrated team capablecollaborative associations have seen a surge of interestof decision making, evaluating, and self-healing to in groups like the American Council for Technology andcontinuously improve.Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) Emerging Technology Community of Interest. 5 As with the benefits of open approaches to the cloud discussed above, open application development can Several IBM Center reports have helped identify earlyleverage open source software networks to accelerate the innovators in government use of AI and other emergingpace of innovation by bringing IT professionals together technologies, including: to work across an enterprise and access commercial best Delivering Artificial Intelligence for Government:practice. If an agencys IT workforce is saddled by static Challenges and Opportunities 6 infrastructures and closed systems, then the introduction of new technologies will be constrained by the capacity of More Than Meets AI and More Than Meets AIPart II 7 those systems for change. In contrast, an open approach to Financial Management for the Future: How Governmentapplication development expands the playing field of ideas, Can Evolve to Meet the Demands of a Digital World 8 prototypes, and pilots for new innovation considerably. In addition, from a workforce perspective, openness helps A common theme across these reports involves the need toincrease the job pool of qualified professionals as opposed build new applications over modernized and cloud-basedto siloed applications that only a few know how to use infrastructure. As noted in Delivering Artificial Intelligence, 9 and maintain. This is growing in importance as government upgrading IT infrastructure to support AI systems, leveragingemployees reach retirement age at an ever-increasing rate and cloud computing strategies can help agencies better identifythe public sector competes for talent with the private sector.80 www.businessofgovernment.org The Business of Government'