Govt employees concerned about the impact of AI technologies: Gartner Survey

Government organisations worldwide are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help them achieve their public purpose, but government employees are still concerned about the technology's impact, Gartner Inc's survey shows. About 36 per cent of government respondents in the 2021 Gartner CIO survey said they planned to increase investment in AI/machine learning in 2021.

The 2021 Gartner CIO Survey was conducted in July-August 2020 with a total of 1,877 respondents from all geographies and industry sectors (public and private), including 237 respondents from all tiers of government.

Chatbots or conversational agents are leading government AI technology adoption, with 26 per cent of survey respondents reporting they have already deployed them. According to the Gartner Digital Transformation Divergence Across Government Sectors survey, a further 59 per cent expect to have deployed them within the next three years.

However, a separate Gartner survey found AI technologies are still seen as uncertain among government employees who have not worked with any AI-backed solutions. More than half (53 per cent) of government employees who have worked with AI technologies believe they provide insights to do their job better, compared to 34 per cent of employees who have not used AI.

Around 42 per cent of government employees surveyed who have not worked with AI solutions understand that AI is a means to getting work done. But only 27 per cent of these same respondents believe AI can replace many tasks.

"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 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 the most widely adopted AI technology for governments, only 15 per cent have currently deployed it, and a further 69 per cent plan to within the next three years.

Government organisations also plan to implement more specialised AI solutions, such as geospatial AI (GeoAI), which uses AI methods to produce knowledge through spatial data and imagery analysis that is more relevant to government sub-sectors such as defence and defence intelligence, transportation, and local government.

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

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