Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene

Back in September of 2024, the IBM Center for The Business of Government gathered a group of 30 experts in the realm of Artificial Intelligence, to consider and discuss the benefits and challenges of AI in the public sector. Over the course of the last several months, the wisdom garnered from that exciting gathering has been distilled in a series of blog posts.

How best to take advantage of the promise of AI while mitigating risks was a primary topic at a gathering of 30 AI experts last year.  The first installment of a four-part series drawn from this conversation focused on the benefits of AI.  Our second blog began the conversation of the roundtable’s views on key challenges and solutions that need to be addressed to achieve such benefits.

The headlines are full of exciting news about the potential use of artificial intelligence in the public sector. States, localities and the federal government are all in the game, looking to use this technology to help grapple with streams of data and to help leaders make decisions.

But the expanding use of AI challenges government to use this technology fairly and well.

At the close of 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) didn’t crack the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ list of the “top ten priorities” for the coming year. However, by December 2023 AI took third place, and could well be number one by the end of this year. 

As advances in AI move at seemingly lightning speed, understanding its benefits, challenges and solutions to those in the public sector has become essential.

Over the last few years, hundreds of billions of dollars have been made available, directly or indirectly, to benefit states and local governments.

Historically, state and local governments have been prescriptive in their job descriptions, requiring a pre-set level of education, professional experience and even specific skills in various pieces of software.

But that’s changing, as a growing number of governments are dropping degree and years of experience requirements for certain roles, and instead emphasizing skills.

For the most part, we’ve pointed to issues that require careful examination of the information to determine if its trustworthy or not.

But, as time has passed, we’ve come across a great many signals, easily spotted and identified, that point to quicker recognition that information should be scrutinized. Here are a half dozen examples:

The dedicated government officials we were observing had started their days at the crack of dawn preparing for the work ahead, and then were in back-to-back meetings for hours on end. By late afternoon, we noticed that many could barely keep their eyes open (and at least a few failed in that effort, at least for a few seconds at a time).