Foundations to Footholds: Industry Talks AI Purchasing, Deployments

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Industry leaders talked through the many issues that face government adoption of artificial intelligence during a panel discussion at the recent GovAI Coalition Summit*.

The exponential explosion of new platforms and capabilities has put public-sector organizations in a sort of perpetual catch-up mode, where they are being driven by increasing internal business and constituent pressure to move faster.

Nicki Bringle, public-sector field sales representative with Google, cautioned that a primary concern for government needs to be good data and foundational policy, rather than quickly plugging in the latest technology.

“Everyone knows the term 'garbage in, garbage out.' It’s real,“ Bringle said. “Think about your data and whatever kind of AI tools are only going to be as effective as the cleanliness of the data that you have. So I would say, tackle that first.”

While IT may understand how important good data hygiene is, other parts of the organization might take more convincing, said Citibot CEO Bratton Riley. He suggests reshaping the conversation to focus on aspects of the business they do understand — often the budgetary aspects of government.

“What we’ve learned is, like city managers, with all due respect, they might not be data hygiene focused, they might not be communications focused, but you know what they understand? They understand the beans; they know how to count the beans,” Riley said.

The varying levels of sophistication or comfort with technology — especially where it intersects with public service — make a compelling use case for AI technology, said Polimorphic Vice President of Engineering Kyle Patel. The early days of interactive voice response (IVR) or numbered menu systems leave something to be desired in cases where constituents aren’t sure which department is responsible for a particular service.

Chat technology is now at a place where constituents can have a conversation with a chatbot and find services more seamlessly than ever.

“The phone is the ultimate equalizer, and enabling folks to use AI tooling via a phone opens it up to basically 100 percent of people,” Patel said. “And that’s why it ends up being really powerful ... both for residents and internally to your organizations.”

Where procurement is concerned, Alla Seiffert, public policy lead with AWS, said government should be open to considering less traditional procurement vehicles around AI solutions — especially in the case of secure, compliant marketplaces.

“I think in the past, there has been a desire to overload the procurement process with a lot of rules and governance, because government has felt as though that was the one place where they could exert a lot of control over [purchasing], whether it be data, rights or security,” Seiffert said.

With smaller-scale deployments, organizations can better assess the needs of their business customers and the constituents they serve. Pilots, Seiffert noted, are a good way to assess the viability before scaling up to a larger procurement.

“The thing we’ve heard from the vendor community so far, I mean, at least in this panel, is folks are going to market and delivering really amazing but also very differentiated capabilities that are kind of apples and oranges,” she added. “And a really great way to focus on deciding what your end customers and your constituents want is to try and do some pilot projects, see what works and scale from there.”

As far as navigating through the challenges of market research, Seiffert encouraged public-sector partners to lean on white papers, product demos and requests for information. Riley added that communication throughout the procurement process is critical, as the scope can shift from what a project champion intended to something else as it winds through the bureaucratic process of government procurement.

“When you start an RFP, you’re starting this crazy bureaucratic process, and it takes all this time, and then the scope of ... what the champion of the product wants gets lost in translation in the RFP, and we’ve got to communicate better about that,” Riley said.

Polimorphic’s Patel added that public-sector leaders need to feel comfortable pulling from their peers to share knowledge and capitalize on successes in this space.

*The GovAI Coalition Summit is hosted by Government Technology in partnership with the GovAI Coalition and the city of San Jose. Government Technology is part of e.Republic, Industry Insider — California’s parent company.