Governments slow in offering GenAI services for citizens
Less than 25% of government organisations will have generative AI (GenAI) services for citizens by 2027. Fear of public failure and a lack of community trust in government use of the technology will slow adoption for external use with citizens, marketing research firm Gartner says in a forecast.
“While governments have been benefiting from the use of more mature AI technologies for years, risk and uncertainty are slowing GenAI’s adoption at scale, especially the lack of traditional controls to mitigate drift and hallucinations,” says Dean Lacheca, Gartner VP.
“In addition, a lack of empathy in service delivery and a failure to meet community expectations will undermine public acceptance of GenAI’s use in citizen-facing services.”
A global survey of over 2,400 CIOs and technology executives found that 25% of governments have deployed, or plan to deploy GenAI in the next 12 months. A further 25% plan to deploy in the next 24 months.
Early focus has been on establishing an initial governance framework to support experimentation and narrow adoption, the survey shows.
“GenAI adoption by government organisations should move at a pace that is aligned to their risk appetite, to ensure that early missteps in the use of AI don’t undermine community acceptance of the technology in government service delivery,” said Lacheca.
“This will mean back-office opportunities will progress more rapidly than uses of the technology to serve citizens directly.”
Governments are advised to build trust by establishing transparent AI governance and assurance frameworks for both internally developed and procured AI capabilities.
“These frameworks need to specifically address risks associated with citizen-facing service delivery use cases, such as inaccurate or misleading results, data privacy and secure conversations,” said Lacheca.
“This can be done by ensuring governance processes specifically address each risk both before and after initial implementation.”
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