Generative AI for Government: Practical Applications and Implementation Guide

How Can Generative AI Be Used in the Government?
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Generative AI can support government operations in numerous ways, from automating mundane tasks to providing rapid insights that enable decision advantage.

Let's explore some practical applications of GenAI in government.
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Government AI Solutions (Examples)
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• Defense and Intelligence: Defense and Intelligence agencies can rapidly extract trusted answers from authoritative sources, leading to faster and more accurate decision-making.
  
  Example
  An analyst assessing military readiness might ask, "What are the current troop movements in a specific region?" and receive information from intelligence reports, satellite imagery, and military communications with links to the source material for deeper analysis.
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• Procurement and Contracting: Procurement and contracting teams can expedite RFI/RFP processes by asking standardized questions of multiple documents and receiving summarized responses.
  
  Example
  A procurement and contracting team can develop a standardized list of questions to evaluate bids on government projects, such as "What is the expected timeline for project completion?" and "What qualifications do your team members have?" The AI solution extracts relevant information from each RFP and provides concise summaries, improving decision-making and streamlining the procurement process.
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• Acquisition Support: Technology acquisitions teams can tackle complex inquiries related to various pieces of the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulation), accelerating innovation and technology adoption.
  
  Example
  A member of the technology acquisitions team might ask, "What are the guidelines for modular contracting of information technology services?" They receive pertinent information extracted from relevant sections of the FAR, complete with citations, ensuring adherence to regulations and expediting the acquisition process.
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• Field Operations: Officers and agents in the field can use mobile devices to ask questions about policies or manuals, receiving instant, attributable answers for quick reference.
  
  Example
  A field agent can use their mobile device to ask urgent questions in time-sensitive situations, such as, “What’s the protocol for handling a suspected drug-related incident?” or “What are the guidelines for engaging a hostile suspect?” They receive immediate, verifiable answers about operational procedures from reliable sources like internal policy manuals and law enforcement databases, allowing for quick reference and informed decisions on the spot.
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• Report Generation: Units and organizations can efficiently consolidate feedback, monitor topics and trends, and produce comprehensive reports simply by asking questions in natural language. Ideal for post-event debriefs and capturing lessons learned from operations.
  
  Example
  An analyst on an Emergency Preparedness Committee, tasked with preparing a report on lessons learned, might ask, "What were the key challenges encountered during the recent disaster response?" The analyst receives insights from after-action reviews, stakeholder interviews, and operational data to efficiently compile a detailed report that highlights opportunities for improving future disaster relief efforts.

Benefits and Risks of Generative AI in the Public Sector
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How can AI help the government?

Generative AI applications can revolutionize how government organizations retrieve answers from a complex ecosystem of policies, proposals, manuals, lessons learned, and other documents.

Benefits of generative AI for federal government include:

• Rapid access to trusted content. Government employees and service members can quickly review complex policy documents, sift through critical SOPs, and summarize lessons learned from various sources. This ensures decision-makers have the information they need without unnecessary delays.
• Streamlined workflows. By automating repetitive tasks and simplifying information retrieval, GenAI helps eliminate workflow bottlenecks. Processes like procurement can be streamlined, driving more efficiency.
• Democratized access to knowledge. GenAI solutions ensure knowledge is shared where needed, without burdening tenured individuals. This democratization supports better-informed decisions across the board.
• Enabling decision advantage. With accurate and timely answers, government orgs can make faster and more informed decisions. Whether fielding queries about new policies or analyzing data for strategic planning, GenAI ensures leaders have the right information at their fingertips.

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"I want to gather information, I want to process that information, and I want to be able to disseminate that information to individuals who can make decisions. Then, we will have a decision advantage over our adversaries."

Hon. Ronald Moultrie‍

‍Former Under-Secretary of Defense (Intelligence & Security),
at the 2024 Pryon Government AI Forum

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What are the dangers of AI in government?‍

While GenAI offers numerous benefits to government operations, it is not without risks, such as:

• Data Privacy: Given the sensitive nature of many government documents, organizations must ensure that only authorized users are granted access and that access control to documents is honored during AI interaction.
• Data Leakage: To protect against unintended data exposure of sensitive and classified information, government data should never be used to train AI models.
• Cyber Threats: Government organizations must prioritize cybersecurity measures to safeguard against potential cyberattacks on GenAI systems.
• Hallucinations and Misinformation: Organizations must establish safeguards to verify and validate the information produced by GenAI solutions, preventing the spread of misinformation stemming from inaccurate or fabricated responses, known as hallucinations.
• Biased Results: Organizations need to thoroughly understand and critically evaluate the data used to train AI models. If not carefully managed, AI systems can reinforce existing biases present in the training data, resulting in unjust outcomes.
• Copyright and Legal Risks: Organizations must consider copyright and legal risks when using AI to create or modify content, especially in terms of attribution and ownership.
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To mitigate these dangers, government organizations should carefully evaluate GenAI solutions before incorporating them into their operations and establish robust processes for data management, oversight, and accountability.

Regular audits should be conducted to ensure that the technology is aligned with official regulations, such as the Executive Order issued by the White House on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.

Additionally, government agencies within the Department of Defense should ensure any new AI solution adheres to the Responsible AI (RAI) framework using the RAI SHIELD Assessment.

4 Key Considerations for Implementing Generative AI in the Public Sector

The following four considerations provide a framework for government organizations to navigate the complexities of implementing generative AI solutions into their operations.
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1. Accuracy

For federal organizations, accuracy is imperative. Decisions based on AI-generated insights can have far-reaching consequences, impacting national security, public policy, and citizen welfare. Inaccurate data can lead to poor decisions, inefficiencies, and potentially disastrous outcomes. Government orgs need GenAI solutions that can precisely ingest and interpret vast amounts of unstructured content, supporting complex decision-making processes with reliable and actionable information.
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Challenges in ensuring accuracy in government AI solutions

• Complexity of unstructured content. Government documents are complex and often contain tables, images, graphics, schematics, and drawings that many AI models struggle to interpret accurately. Older documents may exist in formats no longer compatible with many modern systems, such as on microfiche.
• Content duplication across multiple repositories. Having multiple versions of content in various repositories complicates the accuracy of data ingestion. A reliable GenAI system must scan all relevant repositories and consolidate accurate information to ensure comprehensive, nonduplicative, and trustworthy results.
• Understanding user queries. Without sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, users need to be very precise with their prompt inputs. Otherwise, the AI model can misinterpret the user’s query and serve up irrelevant, incorrect, or incomplete responses.
• Mitigating AI hallucination. Inaccurate or fabricated responses (known as AI hallucination) can pose serious risks to government organizations if the AI-generated output is taken at face value, as many commercial GenAI products do.  

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2. Security

Government infrastructure impacts millions daily, making security paramount. Robust measures are needed to protect sensitive data, ensure processes remain secure, and that critical services remain uninterrupted. GenAI solutions must provide strong security measures to protect data integrity and confidentiality. AI models should not train on government data and should offer on-premises or air-gapped deployments for critically sensitive information.
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Challenges in ensuring security in government AI solutions

• Protecting against data leakage. Government organizations must ensure that data is not exposed during model training or AI interaction, and only authorized personnel can access sensitive information.
• Risk of cyber threats. Government organizations must stay vigilant against the threat of cyber-attacks and consider on-premises or air-gapped deployments for highly confidential information.
• Controlling access to sensitive information through data governance. Government organizations must establish strict data governance policies and protocols to ensure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information. This includes establishing processes for data management, auditing, oversight, and accountability.

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3. Scalability

Federal organizations generate and manage copious amounts of data stored in various formats and systems, encompassing everything from citizen records to national security information. Effective AI solutions must handle high volumes of frequently-updated content without compromising speed or accuracy. They should adapt to diverse data types and connect to multiple content sources, maintaining seamless content updates.
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Challenges in ensuring scalability in government AI solutions

• High volume of content. Federal organizations manage massive volumes of data, often amounting to millions of pages.
• Frequent content updates. Government documents are in constant flux, requiring ongoing updates to ensure information remains current.
• Diverse content types and repositories. Data in federal organizations exists in various formats (e.g. PDFs, PowerPoints, and Word files) and is scattered across multiple systems (e.g. SharePoint, ServiceNow, and Amazon S3). This content diversity makes it difficult to standardize and streamline accurate information retrieval at scale.
• Stringent latency thresholds. In high-stakes federal and defense contexts, even a few seconds of delay can significantly impact decision-making and operational efficacy. Meeting these strict latency requirements is crucial to maintain immediate responsiveness, necessitating robust, scalable solutions that can handle real-time processing demands.
• Architectural constraints. Many federal organizations and DoD agencies have strict architectural requirements for both cloud-based and on-premises systems where access to the internet is not available.

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"If you look at the amount of data that the federal government and agencies have collected over the last two to three decades, there are tremendous insights and correlations that exist. And the amount of data that's being added on a daily basis continues to increase. Being able to make use of not only the data that's been collected but also the data being collected in real time is key."

Shane Shaneman

Senior AI Strategist - US Public Sector, NVIDIA,
at the 2024 Pryon Government AI Forum‍

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4. Speed

In federal organizations, the time to derive value from AI applications can significantly impact operations. Delays can stall results and waste resources. Government orgs need fast-deploying AI solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing systems, offering quick content updates – without the need to raise IT tickets.
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Challenges in ensuring speed in government AI solutions

• Lengthy deployment timeframes. Government procurement processes are often long and complex. The need for extensive testing and validation of unproven AI solutions can significantly prolong deployment times.
• Integration complexity. Setting up AI infrastructure and integrating multiple point solutions can be time-consuming. This is especially true for federal organizations due to often outdated legacy systems and the necessity to comply with stringent security and regulatory requirements.
• Stalled content updates. Government organizations need to update content consistently to ensure their data remains relevant and accurate. However, content updates after the initial rollout of a GenAI solution can be a long and slow process that creates bottlenecks in the IT department.

Retrieval-Augmented Generative (RAG) for Government: The answer to GenAI implementations secure and accurate enough for government needs‍

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What is RAG for Government?

RAG is a framework that combines retrieval and generative capabilities to deliver accurate and trustworthy responses. By leveraging cutting-edge ingestion and retrieval technologies, RAG systems can retrieve accurate, relevant, and verified information before applying generative models to deliver answers. This dual approach ensures a higher level of precision and reliability in the responses generated, addressing one of the primary concerns with traditional generative models.
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This approach mitigates common issues with GenAI tools, such as hallucinations (where AI generates incorrect or fabricated information) and ensures that responses are based on authoritative content with clear source attribution.

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RAG enhances the capabilities of GenAI by ensuring that the generated content is accurate, safe, and authoritative.

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What are the Benefits of RAG in government applications?
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• No hallucinations. By prompting generative LLMs to generate output based on trusted content, RAG mitigates the risk of incorrect or fabricated information, known as hallucinations.
• Authoritative content. RAG pulls responses exclusively from sources that have been intentionally selected by the organization, ensuring that the information provided is reliable and verifiable.
• Clear source attribution. Each generated response includes clear attribution to its source(s), allowing users to trace back the information to its origin.
• Document-level access controls. Select RAG architectures like Pryon’s can provide granular control over document access, ensuring that sensitive information remains secure and is only accessible to authorized users.

How Can You Get Started with Government-Grade RAG?

Get government-grade RAG right with Pryon RAG Suite. Pryon RAG Suite provides best-in-class ingestion, retrieval, and generative capabilities for building and scaling an enterprise RAG architecture.

Our expert team of Solutions Engineers will work closely with you to scope, build, and scale enterprise RAG across your organization.

Let us show you how. Request a demo.