Kerry Cai
, November 17, 2023
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It is evident that artificial intelligence’s (AI) vast potential to transform is invaluable to the critical juncture of any business and industry. From garnering critical business insights to automation and enhancing labor-intensive processes, AI has a plethora of undeniably powerful applications that are instrumental to the workplace.  

This is especially true for the public sector, where the astronomical rise of robust AI-enabled cloud services is rapidly changing the course of society. Reports from the Deloitte AI Institute confirm that 60% of investments in AI and analytics aim to directly impact real-time governmental operations and outcomes within the next year. To understand the practical applications of this impact, let us explore prominent use cases of AI integration and adoption that has benefited the public sector.

Public sector use cases for AI

Since the inception of smart cities, governments have focused resources and efforts on optimizing operational infrastructures in both existing and future city projects with the aim to remediate significant challenges that metropolitan cities constantly grapple with regarding logistics, environmental and healthcare challenges.  

Using artificial intelligence, the developments in computer vision help to enable real-time object detection and tracking algorithms leading to improved monitoring in areas such as traffic surveillance to highlight high incident regions, analysis reporting for optimization of energy consumption for amenities based on usage, and reduction of traffic congestion. Overall, this data helps to support evidence for improving transportation infrastructure to better reduce carbon emission levels.  

Furthermore, AI has vastly improved the field of robotics engineering which has alleviated a range of improvement initiatives from smarter and more efficient machinery for construction to smart bots (chat bots with iterative learning capabilities) to assist governments in appropriately distributing provisions of benefits or allocation of financial aid.  

Despite the myriad of use case possibilities for city-wide enhancements, there exists barriers and stringent regulations surrounding privacy, security and transparency that has hindered the pace and drawn skepticism of the potential risks of adopting AI technologies for public sector transformation.

Microsoft builds robust AI frameworks you need, responsibly

Microsoft has indisputably positioned itself as a leader in adhering to regulatory requirements, evident in both their Microsoft 365 productivity suite and Azure environment tailored for the public sector. To elaborate, there are specific criteria of the US government-wide compliance program, FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management), that cloud services must meet for use within the public sector. Microsoft’s solutions comply with FedRAMP’s High impact level designation, containing an extensive 425 cybersecurity controls. At the highest level, the security controls are tailored to prevent critical data loss and provide comprehensive protective measures that ensures the high-performance of AI models with industry-leading uptimes. 

Starting in the first quarter of the 2024 calendar year, Microsoft will roll out a preview of Azure OpenAI within the Azure Government tenant will allow federal, state, local, and subsequent government agencies to integrate the latest large language models (LLM) in GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and DALL-E within their own cloud ecosystem. With such groundbreaking mission support capabilities at their disposal, users can achieve the following to profound effect:

  • Tailored content generation assistance: Produce text or visual outputs based on mission or project inquiries and requests, which drastically reduces time spent on research and analysis and enables you to shift focus and efforts toward higher-level directives and tasks.  
  • Create concise content summaries: Highlight key insights in lengthy texts for rapid assessment and analytics.
  • Semantic search: Pinpoint specificities in the user inputs to accurately improve upon search results.  
  • Generate code and remediation: Generate code based on user parameters’ natural language descriptions. Additionally, natural language prompts can troubleshoot and streamline existing lines of code.  

For specific classified workloads, select national security customers will receive preliminary access to open-source solution LLMs via Azure Machine Learning. Microsoft’s MLaaS (Machine learning as a service) offering, can assist customers in developing, iterating, and deploying high-quality learning models at scale.

Embrace the future of the public sector with Microsoft 365 Copilot

While Azure OpenAI Service lays a robust foundation for AI integration, Microsoft 365 Copilot stands out as the transformative force in government workspaces for the near future. Specifically tailored for Government Community Cloud (GCC) users, this AI-powered assistant employs natural language processing to leverage data unified under your Microsoft Graph tenant, Microsoft 365 apps, and the web. It translates user text inputs into responsible AI action plans across all government workloads.  

From a productivity perspective, Microsoft Copilot enhances efficiency across the board, offering real-time meeting summarization to help users stay focused and informed about potential next steps. These smart automation capabilities will be further augmented with the upcoming Teams Premium Intelligent Recap features set for release to GCC users in Spring 2024.  

Given all the exciting new public sector offerings from Microsoft, it is imperative to assess your organization’s technical readiness for Copilot and OpenAI. That is where Alithya steps in – serving as your digital adoption partner, guiding you through the implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI for public sector missions and endeavors.

Position yourselves as leaders in the field of AI urbanization and innovation

Alithya is a global provider of learning services and solutions that help organizations humanize technology. We can help government agencies establish their identity as prominent front-runners in a human-centric approach to adopting AI carefully, correctly, and meaningfully.  

Our array of one-day AI Workshops will explore the realm of Artificial Intelligence as participants learn the course of its history, considerations when implementing any AI technology as well as its transformative role and value in public sector organizations.

Here is what Alithya covers:  

  • A brief history of AI  
  • Review considerations and address potential risks of AI  
  • Measuring the impact of AI for the public sector  
  • Opportunities for generative AI in the public sector  
  • AI use case scenario discovery  
  • Explore success criteria  

With our wealth of experience and guidance, you can confidently and decisively execute secure, responsible, and regulatory compliant initiatives. Remember, Alithya is here to support you at every step of the way, and we strive to humanize your experiences with artificial intelligence technologies.  

To learn more about our workshops and array of other AI offerings, contact us today!

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