The government workscape is changing rapidly. This major shift is multifaceted with jobs switching to remote, an overall struggle to fill roles, budget cuts and the automation of many tasks. However, one thing is clear: Government agencies are being forced to do more with less. People are fleeing the public sector for private-sector jobs. In fact, the number of private-sector jobs has now surpassed its pre-pandemic level.

Artificial intelligence already helps run government, with cognitive applications doing everything from reducing backlogs and cutting costs to handling tasks we can't easily do on our own, such as predicting fraudulent transactions and identifying criminal suspects via facial recognition. Indeed, while we expect AI-based technology in the years ahead to fundamentally transform how public-sector employees get work done--eliminating some jobs, redesigning countless others, and even creating entirely new professions1--it's already changing the nature of many jobs and revolutionizing facets of government operations. Agencies today face new choices about whether some work should be fully automated, divided among people and machines, or performed by people but enhanced by machines. Our latest report, AI-augmented government, conservatively estimates that simply automating tasks that computers already routinely do could free up 96.7 million federal government working hours annually, potentially saving $3.3 billion. At the high end, we estimate that AI technology could free up as many as 1.2 billion working hours every year, saving $41.1 billion.

"We don't have enough people to keep up." "We have to go through miles of case law on this one." "The paperwork is killing our productivity." "We don't know because we can't track events like that." Spend enough time in or around government agencies, and these are the kinds of pressures you're likely to hear about.

At this year's Notting Hill Carnival, the Metropolitan Police used facial recognition technology for the first time. Paul Wiles, the biometrics commissioner, reported that it was a test to see how the technology performed in such a bustling scenario. In theory, police records of 20 million faces can be cross-referenced with other crime data to identify likely offenders. In fact, we are seeing an explosion in new tech across the public sphere. Until now the model has been somewhat conservative, digitising processes humans once did.

Let our Chatbot help--type your question above to explore AI topics. Artificial intelligence already helps run government, with cognitive applications doing everything from reducing backlogs and cutting costs to handling tasks we can't easily do on our own, such as predicting fraudulent transactions and identifying criminal suspects via facial recognition. Indeed, while we expect AI-based technology in the years ahead to fundamentally transform how public-sector employees get work done--eliminating some jobs, redesigning countless others, and even creating entirely new professions1--it's already changing the nature of many jobs and revolutionizing facets of government operations. Agencies today face new choices about whether some work should be fully automated, divided among people and machines, or performed by people but enhanced by machines. Our latest report, AI-augmented government, conservatively estimates that simply automating tasks that computers already routinely do could free up 96.7 million federal government working hours annually, potentially saving $3.3 billion.

Artificial intelligence already helps run government, with cognitive applications doing everything from reducing backlogs and cutting costs to handling tasks we can't easily do on our own, such as predicting fraudulent transactions and identifying criminal suspects via facial recognition. Indeed, while we expect AI-based technology in the years ahead to fundamentally transform how public-sector employees get work done--eliminating some jobs, redesigning countless others, and even creating entirely new professions1--it's already changing the nature of many jobs and revolutionizing facets of government operations. Agencies today face new choices about whether some work should be fully automated, divided among people and machines, or performed by people but enhanced by machines. Our latest report, AI-augmented government, conservatively estimates that simply automating tasks that computers already routinely do could free up 96.7 million federal government working hours annually, potentially saving $3.3 billion. At the high end, we estimate that AI technology could free up as many as 1.2 billion working hours every year, saving $41.1 billion.

At age 8, Audrey Tang wrote a computer game for her 4-year-old brother to help him learn fractions. At 14, she dropped out of school to start a search-engine company. At 19, she had left Taiwan to work as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Now, at 36, she is Taiwan's youngest government minister, charged with jump-starting the island's stagnating, $130-billion high-tech sector. She is also Taiwan's first transgender Cabinet minister and, perhaps most remarkable, the only one who describes herself as an anarchist.

"We have to go through miles of case law on this one." "We don't know because we can't track events like that." Spend enough time in or around government agencies, and these are the kinds of pressures you're likely to hear about. How can governments overcome challenges like these that are both detail-oriented and labor-intensive? Increasingly, they could be turning to artificial intelligence (AI).