Secure Ai In Government Use Cases

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Apr 04, 2025

5 minutes read

Secure AI in government: Improving services for all

Generative AI promises to help the public sector deliver more and better services with higher responsiveness and faster decision-making.

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The public sector is the backbone of our daily lives — maintaining roads, educating our children, ensuring national security, and providing essential social services.

Its various government agencies – at national, regional, and local level – have to process a vast amount of disparate information about millions of citizens, as well as formulate complex policies and ensure they are carried out and enforced. And they often have to do all this with limited budgets, while adapting to political and economic change.

It’s a profile that suggests generative AI (GenAI) could have a big effect in the coming years on the way governments worldwide work, from the national level all the way down to local councils. Let’s explore the benefits and the top use cases for secure AI in government and the public sector.

Benefits of secure AI in government

Mckinsey estimates that GenAI can have a $480 billion productivity impact on the public sector and adjacent industries in the coming years. Boston Consulting Group sees those gains rising to $1.75 trillion annually by 2033, with the government market for GenAI products projected to grow 50% per year.

Yet, the path forward isn’t without hurdles. Government agencies must navigate concerns around security, accuracy, and public trust. These organizations handle sensitive data, where mistakes or leaks could have dire consequences. It’s no wonder most are treading cautiously. But for those ready to harness GenAI responsibly, the opportunities are enormous.

The UK government recently published a comprehensive plan to harness AI, saying the technology could be the “single biggest lever” for the government to achieve its key goals, including stronger economic growth, improved healthcare provision, and becoming a leader in clean energy.

“AI should become core to how we think about delivering services, transforming citizens’ experiences, and improving productivity,” the report said.

Canada published its own guidelines last year, encouraging federal agencies to start using AI for low-risk use cases such as writing emails and drafting documents.

Let’s look at three transformative ways GenAI can reshape the public sector, offering insights into how governments can seize this moment.

##### Better, faster citizen services

Anyone who’s had to sit in waiting rooms for hours or plow through reams of paperwork to apply for licenses, permits, or social benefits, or just to access relevant information, knows this is an area for public-sector improvement.

Some 60% of callers to the UK tax authority, for example, had to wait more than 10 minutes in the year through April 2023 , a proportion that has risen every year since 2018. In the United States, callers to the Social Security Agency’s national number faced an average wait time of 16 minutes in 2020, up from just 3 minutes in 2011.

This is where AI-powered agents, drawing on government knowledge bases, can have a big impact in cutting wait times, improving satisfaction with public services, and freeing up workers for higher-level tasks. Public agencies can look to the private sector, where the customer-service use case for GenAI has already shown proven success.

After securely verifying a user’s identity, an AI assistant could – in multiple languages – provide personalized information and answer questions about their benefits, such as their eligibility, required documentation, or payout calculations.

The technology is already being used to help buses find faster routes, and to speed up responses to emergency calls. In America, 911 is experiencing an emergency of its own. For every four people needed to answer 911 calls, there is one office chair that sits empty. Police departments and other emergency services throughout the country are taking longer to respond to the 240 million calls per year, half of which aren’t emergencies.

Several U.S. cities, including Phoenix and Fort Myers, FL, have started using AI to triage emergency calls. Their solution integrates with 911 dispatch and electronic health records to filter low-urgency calls out from more urgent cases. In the future, an AI assistant integrated with emergency apps or text services could gather key details from callers and relay them to dispatchers instantly, reducing the time spent on initial...