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Navigating Digital GovernmentHow technology is transforming the

customer experience

Navigating Digital Government

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IntroductionOn 5 April 2017, AIIA hosted the sixth event of the annual Navigating Summit series, this year focusing on rapidly increasing use of data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and associated technologies to support the delivery of government services to its citizens.

The aim of AIIA’s ‘Navigating’ series is to explore opportunities and challenges of technology capability and to generate debate about how that capability can facilitate Australia’s continued economic prosperity and competitiveness. The 2017 Summit was attended by Ministers, government officials, subject matter experts and industry leaders who discussed policy issues, trends, challenges and opportunities related to the increasing use of emergent AI technologies across all sectors of the economy, including finance, government, health diagnostics and defence.

Attendees and speakers addressed critical issues surrounding the development, deployment and use of technologies known as Artificial Intelligence (AI), including machine learning, cognitive analysis, neural networking and natural language processing. While some participants focused on the need to align these new technologies to human practices and behaviours, others emphasised the urgent need for Australian governments to embrace AI-based technologies so as to meet citizen expectations of public sector service delivery. It became evident that citizens are demanding the same high levels of online service delivery from governments as they currently receive from private sector services such as banking, retail and travel.

There were over 200 attendees from business, media, industry and government, demonstrating the strong interest in emergent technologies characterised by algorithm-based decision-making, machine learning, cognitive computing and robo-advice.

Navigating Digital Government

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ThemesWith an overarching focus on adoption by governments of AI technologies, and the human implications of that adoption, the Summit program covered themes such as:• Machine learning and the implications for customer experience in service access and delivery• The role of governments in emerging new service delivery paradigms• Driving better outcomes and reducing service delivery costs • Citizen trust and confidence in new AI technologies.

A way forward on the AI technologies journeyArising from the Summit, a priority for AIIA is to ensure government and the industry cooperate to facilitate the alignment of human behaviours, needs and values with AI machine-learning techniques adopted to support any public sector service delivery.

In support of this AIIA proposes policy that: • explicitly puts the citizen at the centre of AI solutions/approaches that involve or impact them, including transparent consideration of potential challenges and risks; • embraces machine learning and AI technologies to improve Government decision making and service delivery; • adopts agile AI approaches based on international standards and frameworks; • drives AI and machine learning research through partnerships between government, industry and academia.

Navigating Digital Government

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Insights in detailWhat are the drivers?Participants underlined that despite fluctuations in public awareness and acceptance, AI has been making patchy progress since its inception in the 1950s.

More recently, the availability of big data, cloud computing combined with breakthroughs in data analytic tools, and increased computing power have dramatically increased the availability, application and impact of AI. In a short time, AI has become mainstream and is rapidly permeating and transforming entire sectors of the economy including government, health, agriculture and transport. As a result, its deployment raises policy issues across many economic and social dimensions.

Citizens increasingly demand government services delivery matching the timeliness and efficiency provided by the private sector. They interact with governments when their own circumstances change, and they expect interactions to be trusted and empathetic, not static. The scale and complexity of government service delivery in developed economies now requires at least consideration of AI technologies applied to specific tasks supporting those services.

Balancing this realisation is the fact that algorithm-based machine learning is circumscribed by the quality of already collected data, and can incorporate past biases, sometimes resulting in errors that might be catastrophic at most, or merely inconvenient at best. AI reflects both the knowledge and the prejudices embodied in data. Governments must manage the adoption and deployment of AI-based service delivery to minimise these risks, recognising that zero risk outcomes are not possible; relative risk must be the aim.

Navigating Digital Government

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Insights in detailWhat can AI deliver now?Participants agreed that AI can improve efficiency, save costs and enable better/more accurate decisions, since it allows data processing at enormous scales/speed and accelerates the discovery of patterns. Summit speakers also noted that targeted, “little” AI is already here, and due to its task focus, it removes the friction from daily processes. Examples abound in online retail, advanced traffic advice and the like.

Such technologies can be usefully applied as assistive for those with disabilities, and governments must accept that early, wide consultation with these societal cohorts will ensure choice and control for the disabled. In particular, evidence was presented about the ground breaking work of the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), using technology to deliver targeted and fit for purpose accessibility tools for those with a range of disabilities including cognitive and neurological challenges. In a similar vein, voice browser research undertaken by the visually impaired, has opened the Web’s resources to blind users in Europe, Asia and the US.

The work currently undertaken by the NDIA, though developed to support people with disabilities access services, has much broader application and is anticipated to blaze the trail in terms of the AI based service applications.

Others noted AI systems that are designed to augment human intelligence and, for example, help physicians recommend courses of treatment. Most speakers at the Summit were confident that AI would help solve complex global challenges such as those related to the environment, transportation or health by helping to identify complex cause and effect relationships.

Navigating Digital Government

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Insights in detailWhat can AI deliver now? continuedAI designed to accomplish specific problem solving or “human level” reasoning tasks is in advanced research stages. Some participants felt that policy-makers could thus not ignore the possibility of a (hypothetical) “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) whereby machines would become capable of intelligent action, like a human being.

Others cautioned that discussions should be realistic in terms of time scales, highlighting that advanced AI (typically deep neural networking) is necessarily constrained by its inability to “explain” why it makes the decisions it does, based on data analytics. Nevertheless, algorithm-based decisions impacting people were identified as requiring particular transparency. Participants stressed the need to be able to find out which inferences AI makes about people and to question the validity of such inferences and of the resulting decisions. Others noted that “explainability” or “understandability” may become more useful concepts than transparency, as machine code generated by AI rapidly becomes too complex.

Government was called out as having a particular role to play in ensuring transparency or explainability of AI. Through service delivery, governments widened the audience that needs to trust AI.

Navigating Digital Government

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Insights in detailDoes AI destroy jobs?The effects of AI are being experienced unevenly throughout the economy. Projections of the impact of AI on jobs are variable. AI is expected to augment or replace human labour not just in manual work but perhaps also in highly educated professions such as radiology. Others said

the jobs at risk of being replaced by AI tended to be predictable or repetitive jobs such as drivers, cashiers and factory workers.

Speakers noted however, a need to focus on future skills as different types of jobs are created in the wake of high AI adoption. The need for data scientists and related specialists will mean no net reduction of labour opportunities, but rather a re-distribution in the market as expanded demand leads to higher-value jobs across most economic sectors.

Navigating Digital Government

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Insights in detailWhat is the future for AI?The likely impact of AI in the years ahead is still underappreciated by policymakers and by the public at large and this is sometimes translated into fear and anxiety by society. While some speakers foresaw that AI could transform entire sectors of the economy and lead to in-depth societal changes, there was a diversity of views about just how integrated governments can be in the process, when they have to be both policy maker/vision-setter, simultaneously with delivering services to a demanding citizenry.

It was acknowledged that government’s biggest challenge is scale, and some speakers noted that agencies simply cannot throw more resources at the exponentially increasing problem of service delivery – they need to work cooperatively with each other and with industry to make it easier to use vast data collections.

Because they will never be naturally motivated to deliver outside their own area, governments need to adopt new technologies to modularise what they build so there is more scope for re-use and sharing capability.

A recurrent issue was the need for public policy makers from governments to understand and begin to prepare societies for the changes afoot. Policy makers were urged to consider how societies could best benefit from AI while minimising risks of discrimination, privacy erosion and loss of anonymity, as well as possibly setting limits for automated decision-making.

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Participating speakers panelists and moderators• The Honourable Angus Taylor MP, Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation,

Federal Member for Hume• The Hon. Ed Husic MP, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy; Shadow Minister for

Employment Services, Workforce Participation and the Future of Work• Beverley Head, Freelance Journalist• John Paitaridis, Chair of the Board, AIIA• Professor Genevieve Bell, College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU• Dan Bognar, Senior Vice President APAC Solutions Engineering, Cloud Sales, Industries

and Innovation, Salesforce• Adi Kavaler, Global Vice President, Products & Strategy Application Delivery

Management Hewlett Packard Enterprise• Nerida O’Loughlin, Interim New Chief Executive Officer Digital Transformation Agency• Louise Glanville, Deputy CEO for Governance and Stakeholder Relations, National

Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA)• Maryanne Diamond, General Manager of Community Linkages and Engagement,

National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA)• Andrew Underwood, High-Performance Computing Leader, Dell EMC ANZ• Roger Kermode, Chair AIIA Data Analytics, Special Interest Group• Joana Valente, Advisory, Oceania Digital Government Leader EY• Mr Aki Ohashi, Director of Business Development, Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC)• Peter Alexander, First Assistant Secretary Projects, Procurement and Assurance, Digital

Transformation Agency• Gary Sterrenberg, Chief Information Officer, Department of Human Services• Terrie Anderson, Regional Director, Venafi Inc.• Rohan Baxter, Senior Director of Data Science, Australian Taxation Office• Dr. Leif Hanlen, Business Development and PreSales Technical Data61• Dr. Tania Churchill, Senior Data Scientist, AUSTRAC• Al Blake, Principal Analyst, Ovum• Rajesh Govindan, Head of Finance, Australia and New Zealand, AMP Capital• Pia Waugh, Platform specialist• Charles McHardie, Chief Technology Officer, Department of Human Services• Rob Makin, Group Manager, Data Centre Group, Lenovo Australia and New Zealand• Dr Jack R Dan, Adjunct Professor, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University

of Canberra• Rob Fitzpatrick, CEO, AIIA

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