New South Wales digital minister Victor Dominello has asked the state's information and privacy watchdogs to undertake a "scan of the AI and privacy landscape" in the wake of the robodebt royal commission launch. The move is a possible precursor to Australia's first Artificial Intelligence commissioner, a role the outgoing minister backed earlier this week. Mr Dominello told reporters on Monday a dedicated AI watchdog would be "good to see" as the next layer of independent oversight of government technologies and digital services. He said it likely won't arrive before he retires from politics early next year, but an AI commissioner is being explored and will be necessary to maintain public trust in government technology. "I want to make sure that there is oversight [and] there's checks and balances all the way because there will be failures," Mr Dominello said.

LaMDA is a machine-learning model that has been trained on mountains of text to mimic human conversation by predicting which word would, …

In October, when Jamie Taylor's household monthly income fit within new state income limits after Missouri's 2021 expansion of Medicaid, she applied for health coverage. She received a rejection letter within days, stating that her earnings exceeded the acceptable limit. It was the latest blow in Taylor's ongoing campaign to get assistance from Missouri's safety net. Taylor, 41, has spent hours on the phone, enduring four-hour hold times and dropped calls. Time-sensitive documents were mailed to her home in Sikeston but by the time they arrived she had little time to act.

As artificial intelligence gains ground among governments, … market for disaster relief efforts tied to AI and machine learning — a market that …

The Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) announced last month a partnership with Google Cloud and MTX to modernize its occupational licensing process. The shift to digitize licensing with the intent of increasing efficiency is gaining ground in government agencies for a variety of processes, from marijuana licensing to permitting for gun ownership. Many agencies have found legacy licensing systems are outdated or overly complex. For DSPS, the launch of the MavQ AI platform is part of a larger, multi-phase effort to modernize the department's infrastructure, according to DSPS Secretary Dawn Crim. Crim said occupational licensing was originally slated to be the third phase of the project, but it was moved forward in the plan to prioritize the needs of the workforce and to provide family-sustaining wages.

The General Services Administration is among the lesser-known arms of US government, but it has surprising reach. It owns or leases more than 370 million square feet of offices and other facilities on behalf of other federal agencies, and also provides vehicles and IT services. Its government tech support is a particular priority of President Biden's pick to lead the agency, Robin Carnahan. Carnahan, confirmed by the Senate in June, previously worked at 18F, a tech group set up inside GSA by the Obama administration to modernize government technology. In a recent conversation with Tom Simonite, she discussed plans to smooth online access to government services and lure more tech talent.

It is not a simple proposition, but the pandemic aftertimes, coupled with the novel use of some not-so-new technology, could provide an interesting test bed for hiring the right person for the right job as public agencies backfill open positions, all with the bonus of mitigating implicit bias against job candidates. As with most inflection points, the moment has a number of moving parts. Employers, including public agencies, are scrambling to figure the flavor of hybrid working setups that will meet with the least resistance from employees while supporting basic operations. The best-case scenario would be to put public employees closer to the people who need government services -- that probably is not the old office, but probably is not the employees' homes either. According to a Korn Ferry estimate, up to 40 percent of employees are contemplating a career change prompted at least in part by their pandemic experiences.

Between smartphones, IoT censors and automated alerts, the volume of data that flows through some 911 call centers on any given day has grown exponentially over the past decade. When a center is inundated with calls about a single incident, the ability to know which calls are related, and then dispatch the nearest and most-needed response units to their location, can be more than any one, manual call taker can handle. With this in mind, the Safety and Infrastructure division of the technology company Hexagon created an AI-based tool for recognizing related incidents in real time and helping call takers coordinate a response. A news release on Tuesday announced the software as HxGN OnCall Dispatch Smart Advisor, or Smart Advisor for short. The company's Strategic Product Manager Jack Williams told Government Technology that more than 18 months ago, he and some colleagues in the Safety and Infrastructure division wanted to see what public safety challenges might be solved with recent innovations in AI, machine learning and advanced statistics.

The city of Los Angeles' newest IT employee is an as-yet unsung hero who assisted more than 180 people in 24 hours and has answered more than 1,400 queries to the nation's second-largest city. On Wednesday, May 3, however, Chip's anonymity ended when Microsoft and city officials promoted that hard work and potential to the Brooklyn Navy Yard audience at Smart Cities NYC '17. Chip is a so-called chatbot whose name stands for "City Hall Internet Personality," although a Microsoft official said his capacity for learning raises him above that label. "He" considers himself "your personal digital assistant," as will become apparent if you visit the Los Angeles Business Assistance Virtual Network (BAVN), click on the WALL-E-esque icon and type in "What is your name?" The city chose BAVN for the debut as a way to drive vendor engagement and make sure it's publicizing purchasing and procurement opportunities.

At the NASCIO Mid-Year Conference in Baltimore last week, Government Technology talked to state CIOs about whether cognitive computing can help them deal with the data deluge. Wisconsin CIO David Cagigal sees a definite role for technology that learns from citizen behavior to inform services and anticipate future needs. Government Technology editor Noelle Knell has more than 15 years of writing and editing experience, covering public projects, transportation, business and technology. A California native, she has worked in both state and local government, and is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with majors in political science and American history. She can be reached via email and on Twitter.