A wave of AI empowered technology is coming to radically change the way we deliver government services. If our politics can grasp it, AI promises to drive down the costs, improve the experience of consumers and increase accountability of the government.
The administrative and repetitive processes of government can be made more efficient and provided at a significantly reduced cost. From how we manage case work, processing of planning applications, surveying the community, to transacting and collecting taxes. Frontline services will also be transformed. There are already a multitude of AI tools in the health and education sectors that are just the start.
AI driven command centres can manage hospital bed allocations, remote monitoring can be used to care for patients in their own homes, personalised treatment plans based on genomic data could improve patient outcomes, and AI promises better preventative health care through access to AI doctors on demand and early detection technology. NSW schools are trialing EduChat, a tool that helps teachers prepare tailored lesson plans and gives students access to personalised tutors. NSW Health is investing in a Single Digital Patient Record to harmonise data between different hospitals.
A significant investment in data collection and management is required, as well as new privacy rights for citizens over the data that the state holds. We need a Bezos Mandate for government. In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos issued a mandate that all employees must view data as a valuable resource, and expose their data and functionality through service interfaces to other internal departments and the outside world. The increase in volumes of data being captured and the breakdown of data silos resulted in more innovation including the arrival of AWS.
The same culture is needed in the government sector. By building and maintaining a data core for citizen records, government will be able to control access to an application layer for a wide range of AI services and tools offered by different Australian and global companies. Giving the student, patient and frontline worker a genuine choice over what technology is best for them. This will keep citizen data secure, and promote competition among application providers – protecting against any technology firm gaining a monopoly over a critical service.
This will need to be supported by new rights for NSW citizens so they have more control over how their identifiable information is used by government and shared with private providers. These new laws should require a framework of standards to be adopted by the government for sharing of citizen data that enables individuals to access data about themselves, and direct that this information be transferred by the government to accredited, trusted third parties of their choice.
By embracing technology, we have an opportunity to supercharge productivity, transform service delivery, and build a smarter and healthier society.
