Government Intelligence Improved with Artifical Intelligence in the Workplace

Broadening access to the resources essential to AI research and development. 

An expose from a case study of the Director, of the National Science Foundation.

Strengthening and democratizing the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Innovation Ecosystem: An Implementation Plan for a National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource

Issued by the White House in January, presents a road map for standing up a national research infrastructure that would broaden access to the resources essential to AI research and development.

However, without automating processes, it will be difficult to apply AI to any infrastructure and confidently expect access to key resources for R&D. The White House Executive Order on Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government instructs federal agencies to modernize government programs and find ways to reduce costly, time-consuming administrative tasks.

These goals are achievable in digital and automation first organizations.

Based on these agency requirements and many other policies and mandates agencies must comply with, IDC Government Insights recommends that agencies:

Recognize the need for data in real time so employees can be more creative, work more

strategically, and leverage the velocity of connectedness through collaboration.

Ensure automation is central to your road map. This will be critical to scale your digital

business strategies and reduce operating costs. Automation can increase quality, reduce

human error, increase compliance, strengthen controls environments, and add new services to

your organization's portfolio.

Focus on a holistic integration of business processes and a business automation platform.

Integration and automation are inextricably connected. Both are necessary, working together

in concert to deliver on the promise of streamlining cumbersome work, and producing more

accurate results, key to improving productivity of staff.

Consider providing employees with digital assistants to enhance employee experience,

improve operational efficiency, unlock cost saving at scale, and create a more resilient

workforce. Digital assistants can increase productivity through speed of response and process

flexibility and empower employees to make better and more consistent decisions with fewer

errors or mistakes — reducing rework time.

Plan to address cultural resistance. While several agencies are on the cusp of digitally

deploying end-to-end intelligent automation platforms, most are deploying intelligent

applications in just one or two business processes. If your agency is at the start of automation,

plan to address cultural resistance to intelligent robotic processing and enroll agency workers

in offloading mundane repetitive tasks and adapting their jobs to higher skill levels.

Consider solutions such as the AI-powered UiPath Business Automation Platform for mission

impact. This platform combines UiPath's leading robotic process automation solution with a full

suite of capabilities to understand, automate, and operate end-to-end processes, offering

agencies speed in time to mission while enabling employees to be more productive and

engaged in their work. And UiPath Orchestrator provides centralized management and tracks

the work of attended and unattended robots centrally — securing and ensuring productivity for

the entire digital workforce.

Consider digital assistants as the first step of developing large language models. Digital

assistants create simple app interfaces that make it easy for employees to manage, deploy,

and use automations and work with the information the robots bring back. And unlike the

vulnerability of training large language models where agencies must consider data

classifications when deciding which data sets and prompts to use to train the model, digital

assistants bring AI to workflows, analyses, and decisions, delivering AI into every facet of

mission operations.

Consider integrated solutions for your highly sensitive secure workloads such as the managed

service solution developed through the UiPath and Peraton partnership. Through this

partnership, agencies can create and execute automation strategies, drive mission agility,

push automation to the edge and orchestrate transformational impact for such workloads.

FUTURE OUTLOOK: A DIFFERENT TRAJECTORY

In the early days of digital transformation, agencies' focus was often on transforming the business, and

experimenting with technology. Initially agencies solved problems in departmental silos — in branches,

directorates, and field operations. Success wasn't always scalable, and outcomes were not always

clear. This resulted in islands of innovations often with little to no interoperability across technologies

resulting in brittle connections.

As a result, agencies are now entering the era of digital business — with a focus on clear and measurable mission outcomes.

Organizations will still modernize and transform, but that is no longer the primary focus in a digital-first world. The goal is to run

a viable digital agency for the long term.

The current trajectory is about closing digital gaps — automating and connecting data, processes, and

employees to better serve mission outcomes. Cloud pioneers and agency pacesetters with mature

cloud operations and architecture models along with well-managed DevOps processes will be better

prepared to leverage business automation platforms that understand, automate, and operate end-to-

end processes through AI-enabled RPAs. IDC believes that companies with mature "hybrid by design"

cloud strategies will be well positioned to take full advantage of AI innovation across many different

cloud environments as well as across many different locations, core, and network to edge.

However, agencies with less mature processes and those in the early stages of transformation can

benefit from automated intelligent systems. Agencies that have not migrated some parts of their

operations can still benefit from aligning digital workflows, automating processes, and deploying AI-

enabled digital assistants to deliver real-time information to employees.