Governments and public authorities are no more immune to disruption from the advance of technology than any other part of society. Many of the challenges facing public bodies today stem from the fight to tackle the global Covid-19 pandemic. Often, government institutions found that by adopting similar tactics and strategies to industry and the private sector, they too could learn to become more flexible and agile in their response.
This has meant that they also have experienced an accelerated rate of digital transformation. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), and digital twins are now firmly on the agenda of governments and public bodies, whereas previously, they might just have been on the roadmap. Many governments, particularly in more developed nations, have discovered they simply can’t afford to be complacent when there is the chance to drive so much positive change.
So with that in mind, here’s my rundown of some of the biggest and most important tech trends that are affecting governments in 2022.
Proving who you are – or who someone else is – is an increasingly vital ability for individuals and governments in the digital age. Many governments have developed centralized systems for checking criminal records as well as verifying the rights of access to state support such as healthcare and benefits. Other governments have taken it further by implementing compulsory or voluntary national identity cards. Additionally, identity schemes may or may not include biometric measures, like fingerprints, linking an individual as a physical entity to their digital identity as conclusively as is currently possible.
Privacy and the level of state control that the population is happy to accept over their lives is, of course, an issue central to the concept of national digital identity. Some of the most forward-looking initiatives today are focused on decentralized identity, which uses blockchain and distributed ledger technology to create identity databases that are controlled by algorithms rather than institutions. Pilot projects involving decentralized identification built on Microsoft platforms are taking place in the UK, Tokyo, and Belgium. Additionally, the EU has stated that blockchain technology should play a part in “enhancing” the European digital identity framework.
Chatbots are one example of an AI-powered application that we will see more of in 2022 as governments and authorities look for ways to automate public services. In the US, federal, state, and local authorities are all stepping up experiments in the use of natural language processing (NLP) technologies to reduce customer friction. In particular, they have been widely used with services that received large volumes of calls during the pandemic. In the Republic of Ireland, the Office of the Revenue Commissioners created an AI-powered virtual agent that offers 24/7 help for citizens struggling to complete their tax returns. AI-powered “cobots” will also increasingly be used by human public service workers and civil servants, for example, by augmenting their ability to find information, automating repetitive tasks such as form-filling, or maintaining national records archives and public databases. Governments clearly have to give some different considerations to the particular applications of AI compared to those by companies – given the compulsory and sometimes essential nature of the services they provide. But once citizens become comfortable that AI-powered assistants, chatbots and cobots are capable of saving them time, we will undoubtedly see them rolled out in many other public service functions, just as we are increasingly seeing it in the private sector. In fact, Gartner analysts have forecast that 75% of governments will have at least three enterprise-wide automation initiatives underway by 2024.
