Dubai, UAE., October 11, 2021 — Government organizations around the world are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help them achieve their public purpose or mission, but government employees are still concerned about the technology’s impact, according Gartner, Inc.
Thirty-six percent of government respondents in the 2021 Gartner CIO survey indicated that they planned to increase investment 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. A further 59% expect to have deployed 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. Sixteen percent have currently deployed it and a further 69% plan to within the next three years (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Types of AI Adoption Across Government