How can government improve performance with AI?

Submitted by on Wed, 01/29/2025 - 17:26
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Dan Chenok
The recipe for a more efficient U.S. federal government includes eliminating complexity, simplifying how work gets done, and automating manual tasks with artificial intelligence (AI).

Abundant opportunities exist for Al-driven transformation of critical federal government programs to enhance efficiency, strengthen citizens’ trust in government, and bolster national security. For example, secure industry-hosted shared services platforms, for functions like human resources, represent a significant opportunity for agencies to rapidly tap the efficiency benefits of technologies like AI.

The beginning of a new administration provides a unique opportunity to ask fundamental questions about current government programs, and how agencies can optimize their use of limited resources with solutions like AI and shared services. Drawing on research into practices that have proven effective, new leaders can leverage AI -- along with business process expertise and strategic industry partnerships -- to have a high and early impact on government efficiency and productivity. Such actions can be taken in five areas, outlined below.

  1. Accelerating the speed and accuracy of decisions. The government’s reliance on manual processes limits its ability to quickly analyze and act on critical information creating inefficiencies and processing backlogs, slowing decision making and delaying responses.
    1. How AI can help: Automating manual tasks like data entry, form processing and analysis, streamlining workflows, and providing real-time insights – all of which can help with democratizing skills and enabling faster, more informed decision-making.
    2. Recommendation for the government: Adopt AI-powered automation across key agencies while ensuring integration with existing systems for successful implementation.
  1. Unlocking human resources productivity. Legacy IT systems, cumbersome administrative processes and regulatory requirements, and limited resources impede the effective functioning of the government workforce, constraining the productivity of federal employees and the overall efficiency of agencies.
    1. How AI can help: Digitizing and automating administrative tasks and enabling data-driven employee self-service capabilities can help boost productivity and reduce administrative burdens, allowing human resources professionals to do more with less.
    2. Recommendation for the government: Implement cross-agency shared service platforms that leverage commercial capability and centralize tools such as AI-enabled assistants for employee self-service and automate tasks such as payroll, benefits administration, time entry and performance management.
  1. Transforming how government modernizes IT systems. Limited resources, complicated budget cycles and bureaucratic decision trees hinder agencies’ ability to modernize legacy IT systems and fragmented data infrastructures, impeding their use of the more efficient, secure, and scalable technologies needed to meet evolving demands and mission objectives.
    1. How AI can help: Automating legacy IT system migrations and upgrades, optimizing resource allocation and infrastructure management, and providing advanced analytics can help accelerate modernization efforts and reduce costs in the transition to more agile and scalable technologies.
    2. Recommendation for government: Adopt AI, cloud-based, scalable technology platforms and other proven modernization IT solutions to automate, streamline, and accelerate the IT and application modernization process, enhancing security while reducing operational costs.
  1. Combating cyber-based threats. The government’s cybersecurity challenge is complex, urgent, and compounded by sophisticated and evolving cyber threats, outdated legacy IT infrastructure, a shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals, and an overwhelming volume of sensitive data that must be protected.
    1. How AI can help: Automating threat detection, enhancing real-time responses to attacks, and continuously learning from emerging vulnerabilities to strengthen defenses.
    2. Recommendation for the government: Prioritize the development and deployment of AI-powered cybersecurity solutions to build scalable, adaptive systems and services that proactively help identify and mitigate cyber threats.
  1. Reducing fraud, waste, and abuse. Federal agencies face a persistent challenge with fraud, waste, and abuse due to inefficient processes, inadequate oversight, and vulnerabilities in financial systems, which result in the misallocation of taxpayer funds and undermine public trust.
    1. How AI can help: Analyzing large datasets, historical fraud cases, procurement, and travel and expense data to discover hidden patterns that uncover fraudulent activities and wasteful spending, predict future risks, identify cost-saving and resource optimization opportunities, and detect insider threats before they cause significant damage.
    2. Recommendation for the government: Implement AI-driven analytics across key agencies and departments to proactively identify and flag irregularities, predict potential risks, optimize resource allocation, and enhance fraud detection, while investing in modern IT infrastructure to ensure effective integration.

Summary

Across these five areas, AI and automation, delivered via secure shared services platforms that leverage commercial best practice when appropriate, can provide federal agencies with capabilities that enable better performance through faster decision-making, greater accuracy, stronger security, and improved efficiency.

The IBM Center for The Business of Government has multiple studies that take a deeper look at how government can leverage AI in specific areas: