The Australian Federal Government has established a taskforce to ensure the safe and responsible use of AI in public services, with the aim of maximising the benefits of AI technology for the broader community. Complementing the Government AI Taskforce, interim guidance introduced last year is also facilitating the transformation of service delivery to Australians.
The government has also established an AI Expert Group to implement an action plan that will be implemented from 2021. Various Federal and State Government agencies across Australia are considering the adoption of AI technologies.
For example, the Victorian Public Prosecution Service (OPP), the state's largest criminal justice agency, is deploying a case management system on the Appian AI Process Platform to enhance its operations. The solution leverages Appian's data fabric and automation technology to speed up the resolution of criminal cases. The solution increases efficiency, speeding up and improving the resolution process experience for employees and victims of crime. By streamlining operations, reducing administrative burden, and automating processes, the OPP is better positioned to improve productivity and optimize service delivery.
Why AI can enhance Australian Government case management
Case management is one particularly impactful area where government agencies can enhance with AI. At the government level, there are many complex case management applications that range from building permits to permits, and in the case of the Victorian OPP, even evidence collection to prosecute criminal cases.
Food and drug safety is another area where Australian government agencies can benefit from AI. What all use cases have in common is that they involve multiple steps with different documents and stakeholders, such as officials approving applications and permits.
Examples of how government agencies can use AI include:
- Automate routine tasks to increase efficiency.
- Analyze large data sets to identify patterns and trends to make better decisions.
- Summarize information from multiple documents.
- File documents in appropriate system or folder.
- Provides predictive analytics to anticipate potential issues and proactively address them.
Additionally, advanced large-scale language model (LLM) AI systems can understand, analyze, interpret, and generate human language. These systems use deep learning techniques to predict, generate, and output coherent text in response to user-provided prompts. Trained on government data, LLMs can perform tasks such as text extraction, translation, summarization, and conversational response.
The LLM AI system offers intuitive interaction with data and documents through natural language queries, meaning users can ask questions through chat and receive answers based on the data.
6 AI-driven scenarios for government casework
The applications of AI in government casework are endless, but some common examples include:
- Fraud DetectionAI can analyze vast amounts of data from financial transactions and detect patterns that indicate fraudulent activity, allowing government agencies to more effectively prevent and combat fraud.
- Public Service ChatbotsAI-powered chatbots can assist Australians by quickly answering common questions, guiding them through application processes, and providing support services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The technology can also improve accessibility and reduce the workload of government officials.
- ProcurementAI applications can forecast demand, detect anomalies in bids and contracts, assess risk, improve vendor communication, analyze performance metrics, and much more.
- Resource AllocationAI can help allocate resources more efficiently by analysing data to predict areas of high demand for public services, such as healthcare or law enforcement response, and ensure resources are directed where they are most needed.
- Legal Research and AnalysisNatural language processing algorithms can comb legal databases to identify relevant precedents, statutes and regulations, streamlining the legal review process and improving accuracy.
- Environmental Monitoring and ManagementAI techniques such as satellite imagery analysis and sensor networks can be used to monitor and manage the environment 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.
Civilian AI: A safe and secure way to bring AI to government agencies
While AI can certainly drive efficiencies, its use in government workflows raises significant privacy and security concerns. Ensuring that data remains confidential and is handled in a manner compliant with regulations and policies is essential to maintaining public trust and national security. Yet handing government data to public AI engines runs the risk of sensitive information being leaked.
Public AI engines use all available data for training, which means that if government data is available to the engine, it becomes part of the training set, potentially leaking sensitive information and compromising privacy and security. This highlights the importance of using private AI models to keep government data confidential and protected.
Appian has addressed these concerns with its Case Management Studio for Public Sector solution, using private AI models to ensure data remains exclusive – it's never shared externally and is stored securely within an organization's own systems.
Instead of sending data to a central server, models are trained directly on an organization's data, allowing organizations to retain full control and ownership over their sensitive information and protect their own data from unauthorized access or leakage.
Through a strategic collaboration with AWS leveraging Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, Appian is able to host LLM within customer compliance boundaries on the Appian platform, ensuring data security and enabling Appian customers to create and train their own AI models.
Additionally, all data hosted on the Appian Cloud meets Australian Government agency data retention requirements, and all data used during development, production and disaster recovery is stored within Australia and not overseas.
Unleashing the full potential of AI in public services
AI has huge potential to positively impact all sections of the Australian public service and improve service delivery to employees and citizens. Digital tools are already reshaping Australia's public sector, with 85% of government employees experiencing digital transformation initiatives within their departments and agencies, but there is still significant work to be done to fully harness the capabilities of AI.
Government agencies at all levels will need to educate their staff on new AI tools as they are introduced. AppiaHe has been at the forefront of integrating AI into Australian public service operations.
