Unlocking GenAI Opportunities in the Government

Regulators

Streamlined regulation development, compliance, and reporting

GenAI presents an exciting opportunity for heads of regulatory bodies to streamline regulations and compliance monitoring processes. Regulators can use the tools to analyze a broad range of data to identify trends, patterns, and anomalies that might be difficult to identify otherwise, and use the analysis to target compliance and enforcement activities where the greatest risk exposures are.

• Compliance monitoring and detection. Using rules-based logic and GenAI’s capability to assess large amounts of data, governments can expand and optimize their oversight and monitoring of compliance. For example, an environmental conservation agency might utilize GenAI to monitor industrial emissions data in real time and juxtapose it with air quality regulations. The platform could autonomously identify offenders and initiate enforcement measures, contributing to the preservation of clean air standards and safeguarding public health. Financial regulators can use similar approaches to analyze transaction, market, trade, and other data and identify potential instances of insider trading.
• Streamlining regulations. One use case could be to create simulations of how draft regulations might affect different constituents and industries. Another opportunity would be to identify unknown inconsistencies, contradictions, gaps or duplication in existing laws and legislation, or proposed new legislation.

Central Agencies

Accelerating whole-of-government priorities

For the heads of central agencies, such as finance departments, treasury departments, and cabinet or executive offices, GenAI offers a unique opportunity to accelerate the delivery of whole-of-government strategic priorities. Outcomes could include:

• Whole-of-government strategies and policies. Central agencies could use GenAI to assist in the aggregation and synthesis of diverse policies and strategies across government and ensure there is a consistent narrative and strong alignment with overall government objectives and priorities. Officials might also be able to use GenAI to draft, review, and summarize complex topics for government consideration and synthesize commentary and input from across government agencies.
• Improved communication. Using GenAI, governments will be able to communicate policies and budgets more effectively to citizens. With GenAI, the process could become much easier. The tools can synthesize information from a variety of sources and develop draft descriptions and summaries. For example, they can use GenAI to prepare simpler and more accessible communications in text, audio, video, infographics, and interactive media formats. They can support richer, two-way communications with citizens to answer questions and queries; tailor information for specific stakeholder groups, such as industries, regional areas, and families; and instantly translate material into multiple languages. People can access information in the language and format of their choice.

Getting Started with GenAI in the Public Sector

As this article highlights, the rapid advances of GenAI technology present exciting opportunities for the public sector. We have identified five key success factors that will enable government leaders to move beyond the initial small experiments, identify where to begin their GenAI journey, and build their capability to unlock the opportunities of GenAI at scale.

Prioritize the high-value use cases.

Explore the landscape of opportunities, but quickly focus on a few “golden” use cases—the opportunities with the greatest potential value or benefits for citizens and government. Develop pilot projects for these use cases, monitoring the outcomes carefully. We call this phase “experiment and learn.” It enables governments to build-up valuable first-hand experience and skills.

Capture and propagate early learning.

Governments are still early in experimenting with GenAI and learning how it can improve public services. One of the most effective things senior leaders can do is establish mechanisms that encourage the cross-pollination of ideas and learning. To do this, leaders should establish a central team whose responsibility is to track and share success stories and synthesize common lessons and hurdles that government agencies encounter. As GenAI maturity increases, this role will shift towards removing the hurdles and delivering central enablers.

Learn More About Gen AI

Learn More About Gen AI

Invest in enablers.

At some point, every government will roll out these technologies more broadly: refining them, scaling them, and optimizing beyond use cases and pilots. Begin preparing for this at the start. Invest in workforce skills, design governance mechanisms, and put in place key processes and technology choices. Build the technology and data capabilities required to enable more sophisticated GenAI use cases.

Establish guardrails.

Deployed responsibly, GenAI has the potential to deliver significant value, but it also comes with significant risk. This being said, the biggest risk may be if governments fail to adopt GenAI quickly enough or at all. To balance risks and opportunities, government leaders should be seeking to establish Responsible AI frameworks which build the necessary guardrails and create the confidence needed to drive innovation. Recent BCG research shows that when leaders are actively engaged in Responsible AI, companies achieve 58% more business benefits, are 17% more prepared for investing in Responsible AI, and are 22% more prepared for emerging AI regulations.

Encourage innovation.

The benefits of GenAI will emerge as knowledge workers explore the technology first-hand. Leadership encouragement will make a difference. Government leaders must create a permission space for public sector employees to experiment within reasonable boundaries. One way to do this is to demonstrate their own hands-on engagement, working closely with one or two pilots themselves.

Public sector adoption of GenAI is still in the early stages, but it needs to accelerate. The efficiency and citizen benefits of an AI-powered government are no longer hypothetical. Private sector implementations of GenAI-augmented products and services, AI bots and assistants, and even company-specific proprietary trained models show that the value is real and achievable. Some public sector leaders around the world are starting to experiment with use cases, but there is a disproportionate focus on the downside risks. More senior leadership focus and investment are needed to scale this and maximize the upside potential. The time to act and capture the immense government and citizen benefits of this revolutionary technology is now.

The authors would like to thank Francisca Browne and Brad Goff for their contributions to this report.