Government is looking to leverage artificial intelligence to accelerate and streamline citizen experiences — but it needs to do this safely. AI in government must conform to a range of ethical and regulatory constraints.
We talked to Cardinality.ai President and CEO Thiag Loganathan about what agencies are trying to achieve, and how his company is helping them get there.
What’s the role of AI in delivering commercial-grade experiences to citizens?
AI in government can automate some basic things such as alerts and reminders, like verifying documents and preventing errors. Or it might be a chatbot assistant who will help you find things easily.
But the government also has to make sure AI doesn’t do what it is not supposed to do: that it doesn’t discriminate, for example. The AI must respect privacy, it must meet certain regulatory and compliance thresholds.
Government is heavily regulated, and that’s a good thing in AI. Fences and guardrails aren’t bad: You know if you stay within it, everything is good. In government, it’s important to understand what you cannot do, and then we can focus more on what we can do.
And how does Cardinality help with that?
Maybe someone is supposed to upload their license, and by mistake upload their wife’s license. You don’t want to waste time going back and forth. We automate that task in a preset group of use cases — scenarios where automation is possible. We have AI processes that are readily configurable, to meet the government agency’s specific needs.
We have taken all the complexity into consideration, based on 15-plus years of doing AI for Fortune 50 companies. We work within the constraints to show that improvement is possible today, whether it’s a citizen interaction or a worker enablement.
We work within the guardrails, and we make explainable AI, so workers and citizens understand why a certain recommendation is being made. That way, the AI is more of an assistant, not a decision-maker.
What are some of the benefits to the government?
First, it’s time to value. If you want to turn on automation for certain types of documents to be verified, it’s easy to implement. There’s no building that needs to happen. You don’t need 12 months or 18 months or five years to implement these modern experiences.
This is also about reducing the risk. Government technology implementation has been known to be very expensive, to take a lot of time and to not always meet the needs. Because our solution is built specifically for these government-agency use cases, the risk — of budget overruns, of delays, of not meeting the need — is eliminated.
Then, there’s the cost of ownership. This is a cloud-based, as-a-service offering, with dedicated support. So you get continuous innovation, it stays current, and it doesn’t require government agencies to hire expensive resources to maintain and update it.
What differentiates it from other AI offerings?
It’s our business model. Unlike some other SaaS providers, we open the source code, we have a “no-hostage-taking” policy. We give the government agency flexibility to install in their own cloud account. There are flexible licensing options, SaaS with continuous upgrades, limited support or after a period of time, no support — a perpetual-use license model.
Our business model is very government-friendly and government-focused, giving them flexibility and control.
As a GovCon, what’s the biggest business challenge you face? And what are you doing about it?
SaaS is about changing the way things get done, decades of business practice around how technology is procured, implemented, maintained. It’s about changing the mindset around the government procurement model.
Our flexible commercial model helps with that, making the software available in a variety of ways. We also do a lot of work in helping government understand how this actually works: We are doing webinars, we are doing workshops with government leaders. We want them to know that there is an alternate way of getting things done, a way that meets all the regulatory guidance and can get to their outcomes faster, versus custom-building solutions.
Fortunately, it’s not a challenge that we face alone. Salesforce, Microsoft, AWS and SAP are all putting in time and effort to influence government procurement and help modernize government services.
On a personal note, what makes this work meaningful to you?
I have been in the government technology space for close to 10 years now. I like that in supporting the federal mission, we can impact lives of people. All of us depend on government functioning efficiently, and I love having the opportunity to help government be more effective in helping citizens get the needed outcomes.
For vulnerable populations, in particular, some tens of millions of people, these government programs are lifelines. Accelerating and improving outcomes for government agencies has a direct impact in the lives and livelihoods of these tens of millions of Americans. Cannot get any better than that! I love that we’ve a part in making life better for people.