4 steps to advance your AI journey with Microsoft for Government
It wasn’t long ago that the primary focus of technology for governments was digital transformation. Moving from mainframes to the cloud, doing smarter things with data, and keeping systems safe and resilient were more than challenging enough. But then almost overnight the world shifted, as AI (generative AI in particular) unleashed an amazing new wave of capabilities and opportunities.
As a result, my conversations with government customers around the globe have completely changed. They’re still focused on transformation, of course, but now they recognize that AI represents a fundamental shift in enabling them to deliver their most important mission outcomes. At the same time, many customers are overwhelmed by the possibilities. Over and over, we’re asked: How do I get from where I am today to using AI tomorrow? Where do I begin? And how do I avoid the pitfalls?
At Microsoft for Government, we’re in a unique position to help. We have a strong track record of empowering governments around the world with industry-leading technology that delivers improved public services, government programs, and personalized experiences. When it comes to AI, we have the expertise to understand what the technology can do, the mission experience to turn ideas into successful innovations, and the policy and regulatory knowledge to ensure that solutions are ethical and sound.
Most governments are just beginning their AI journeys. So, in this post, we’d like to share our approach to empowering governments with AI and technology, including a look at four key areas of focus in our work with customers. And to set the stage, let’s start by reflecting on what drives us.
A commitment to a better world
Governments don’t care about technology for technology’s sake. They care about delivering great outcomes for their constituents through technology. At Microsoft, we begin there. Our mission is to empower governments to achieve more. To give you a deeper sense of what that means, here is our promise: We will be relentless in working with you to harness the power of AI and technology to solve your challenges—including some of the world’s most important problems—in the most secure, ethical, and efficient manner possible.
What qualifies us to make this promise is not just our technology offerings, it’s our people. Our Microsoft for Government team is composed of senior professionals in every geography with deep domain expertise in government operations and infrastructure, public finance, public health and social services, and public safety and justice. At an engagement I attended recently with law enforcement officials, I realized that the small group of Microsoft people at my table had more than 100 years of law enforcement experience between them.
Across the organization, our people genuinely care about saving lives, reducing the carbon emissions of cities, making policing safer, making tax and revenue management fairer and more efficient, and so much more. I am humbled every day by the passion for the mission and the dedication I see in the people I work with. That’s why I’m excited about what we can do for our Microsoft for Government customers.
Empowering governments with technology: Four areas of focus
In helping Microsoft for Government customers further their digital transformation journeys and make intelligent early steps with AI, we focus our efforts on the following key outcome objectives:
- Deliver innovation in programs and experiences. This is all about creating better community experiences—in other words, making it easier, simpler, and more personalized for people to engage with government agencies. This translates to scenarios such as helping people apply for pensions, apply for student financial aid, or solve problems with government services.
A good example is a new generative AI-driven chatbot developed in India called Jugalbandi, to help people get government assistance. Using language models from AI4Bharat, a government-backed initiative, reasoning models from Azure OpenAI Service, and the widely used WhatsApp mobile messaging system, the chatbot understands spoken or typed questions in multiple languages and relays responses in the user’s local language. It has already expanded to cover 10 of India’s 22 official languages and 171 of a total of approximately 20,000 government programs.
- Empower the government workforce. This means providing employees with the tools, technology, and support they need to do meaningful work. Experience tells us that many people who work in public service are mission-oriented, but that is no longer enough. To attract and retain the very best people, governments need to give them the technology to achieve such varied outcomes as delivering coordinated care for vulnerable people, developing optimal and efficient budgets, and driving criminal investigations to more successful conclusions.
When the Bank of Canada realized that taking advantage of a cloud-first environment required that employees master new skills, they used the online learning program Microsoft Learn to build a new Cloud Centre of Excellence to help them assess available technology, identify opportunities, and accelerate cloud adoption across the bank’s operations. Offering a mix of online on-demand and instructor-led content, the platform helps workers take best advantage of key cloud benefits: powerful resources, on-demand elasticity, and low administrative overhead. It also offers self-paced modules to build skills ranging from fundamentals all the way through to certification.
- Transform government operations and services. This is where the back office comes into play—the resilient cloud infrastructure and AI-driven services that can safely power everything from intelligent transportation services and revamped infrastructure to benefits programs, emergency response, and even court operations—all while deriving the greatest value with taxpayer money.
In Scotland, the 8,000 employees of the Aberdeen City Council struggled to provide social and care to resources to citizens because of disparate data collection procedures and scattershot storage that included everything from Excel spreadsheets to hand-written reports. To help build an accurate picture of citizen needs, the council created a new platform built on Dynamics 365 Customer Service to unify how it collected data and to provide data transparency to all workers. The solution is leading to faster service, a better understanding of citizen needs, and more than two million pounds saved annually on manual data collection.
- Secure government data and protect resources. This is about meeting the cybersecurity challenge while keeping the door open to innovation. And the challenge is a big one: Gartner predicts that by 2025, 30 percent of critical infrastructure organizations will be breached,1 and cybercriminals will likely weaponize operational technology to harm or even kill people.2 To prevent disasters, protect data, mitigate fraud, and reduce compliance risks, governments absolutely need to take advantage of the security power of the cloud in ways that don’t create new bottlenecks.
When the Kalix Municipality in Sweden was hit by a crippling ransomware attack, government leaders decided not to pay the ransom but instead focus on modernizing the security of all their IT systems. Working with their local Microsoft team and local consultants, they adopted Microsoft Defender cybersecurity solutions and implemented new processes and security measures that have proven successful in preventing subsequent attacks, with no interruption in services to citizens.
Embracing AI—advancing transformation
For governments who are excited about the potential of AI but unsure about how to proceed, your first step should be to simply initiate a conversation. Our role is to listen, understand your needs, translate your requirements into solutions, stand by you through development and delivery, and measure the impact and effectiveness of the outcomes. Then, we do it over and over again. We are in it for the long run, and we’re supported by a global network of industry partners who add unique, specific value based on geography, government functions, and technologies.
Next steps
We are still in the early days of generative AI and there’s much more to come. Watch this space in the coming months for more blog posts from leaders across the Microsoft for Government team who share insights, updates, and stories of government transformation. For further resources and to learn more about our offerings, visit our website or get in touch with your Microsoft sales representative.
Microsoft for Government
Empowering government with technology to help solve society’s biggest challenges.
1Gartner Predicts 30% of Critical Infrastructure Organizations Will Experience a Security Breach by 2025, Gartner.
