Govt bodies up AI investment globally, but workforce apprehensive: Gartner

36% of government respondents in the 2021 Gartner CIO survey indicated that they planned to increase investments in AI/machine learning in 2021.

Chatbots or conversational agents are leading the way in government AI technology adoption, with 26% of survey respondents reporting they have already deployed them. Further, 59% expect to deploy them within the next three years, according to the Gartner Digital Transformation Divergence Across Government Sectors survey.

However, a separate Gartner survey found that AI technologies are still viewed with a level of uncertainty, especially among the government employees who have not worked with any AI-backed solutions. More than half (53%) of government employees who have worked with AI technologies believe they provide insights to do their job better, compared to 34% of employees who have not used AI.

“Automation, insight and intelligence are all interconnected priorities for government leaders,” said Dean Lacheca, senior research director at Gartner. “But the operational and services delivery workforce are absolutely critical to the success of any attempts to automate or augment their ways of working. Leaders can generate more acceptance by clearly linking the technology to practical outcomes that benefit government employees and support mission objectives.”

While chatbots and conversational agents are currently the most widely adopted, the most significant AI technology for governments in terms of planned adoption is machine-learning-supported data mining. 16% have currently deployed it and a further 69% plan to do so within the next three years.

Beyond the two leading AI technologies, government organizations also plan to implement more specialized AI solutions, such as geospatial AI (Geo AI) which uses AI methods to produce knowledge through the analysis of spatial data and imagery. The lower uptake reflects the fact that it is more relevant to sub-sectors of government such as defense and intelligence, transportation, and local government.

42% of government employees surveyed who have not worked with AI solutions understand that AI is a means to getting work done. But only 27% of these same respondents believe AI has the potential to replace many tasks, worsening to only 17% when it comes to what they consider to be skilled tasks. Perception improves among those employees that have worked with AI solutions.

A higher proportion of those who have used AI (31%) believed it is a threat to their jobs, compared to 24% of those who have not worked with AI. However, 44% of those who have used AI believe it improves decision making. 31% said AI reduces the risk of making a mistake, but 11% thought it made more errors than humans do.