Code Meets Cabinet: How AI Is Whispering In The Halls Of Government
Arpan Saxena is the COO/CIO at basys.ai (based out of Harvard University), a leading healthcare AI solutions company.
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In recent years, efficiency has become more than a budgetary aspiration—it's a political imperative. Government agencies around the world are under pressure to modernize legacy processes, deliver faster services and meet rising expectations from citizens who've grown accustomed to the responsiveness of the private sector.
In this climate, AI—particularly generative AI (GenAI)—has begun to play an increasingly influential, if quiet, role in government agencies.
While debates around AI tend to swing between utopian dreams and dystopian fears, a quieter transformation is taking place in the government back office. In pilot programs and procurement meetings, GenAI is being evaluated not as a sci-fi curiosity but as a pragmatic tool for paperwork-heavy bureaucracies.
GenAI's utility in government is not found in headline-grabbing robots or automated surveillance systems. It's showing up in the trenches of civil service—where policy briefs are written, compliance forms are reviewed and workflows are clogged with procedural friction.
Governments are experimenting with GenAI to:
• Draft regulatory summaries.
• Analyze and synthesize public comments.
• Review contracts and legal language.
• Generate templates for benefits processing.
• Translate bureaucratic language into plain English.
In the U.S., for example, the Department of Veterans Affairs has piloted the use of GenAI to help streamline correspondence and claims processing, areas long plagued by backlogs and inconsistencies. In the U.K., HM Revenue and Customs is exploring AI-assisted tax advisory tools to better support tax advisors.
These are not moonshots. They are efficiency plays—designed to support, not replace, the civil servant. Based on the current use cases, Boston Consulting Group predicts that the "government market for GenAI applications is projected to grow at more than 50% per year."
Three converging pressures led to the adoption of AI in government agencies:
1. Operational Complexity: Government systems are layered with regulation, exceptions and historical patchwork. Human processing alone is no longer sustainable.
2. Public Expectation: Citizens expect digital government experiences to match the convenience of private platforms. Waiting weeks for a decision or form now feels outdated, if not unjust.
3. Cost Containment: With budget constraints tightening, governments are seeking ways to 'do more with less.' AI tools promise marginal gains at scale—translating into massive impact.
Despite the potential, GenAI in government is not without its risks—and governments know it. Accuracy, bias, explainability and security are front and center in pilot discussions.
The same GenAI model that summarizes a dense policy brief could also, if left unchecked, 'hallucinate' legal interpretations or misrepresent regulations. These tools cannot operate in a vacuum of oversight.
Moreover, transparency is non-negotiable. Citizens have a right to know how decisions are made, particularly when those decisions impact healthcare, benefits or legal status. Any deployment of GenAI must come with clear auditability, ethical review and human-in-the-loop safeguards.
This is why many governments are proceeding carefully: piloting, sandboxing and pairing AI output with expert validation. In this regard, slow may be smart.
As AI quietly enters the policy sphere, the most forward-thinking agencies are not asking if they should use AI—but how. Some questions worth considering before getting started:
• Where are our most friction-heavy processes?
• Which use cases can benefit from GenAI without compromising trust?
• How do we build AI governance that aligns with public values?
• Are we investing in the right partnerships to maintain human and AI collaboration?
These questions will shape the difference between AI as a trend and AI as a transformative tool.
Generative AI's role in government isn't about flashy disruption. It's about quiet transformation. About supporting overburdened systems, improving public trust and returning time to the people who keep the engine of the state running.
Whether this becomes a long-term success story depends not on the tools but on how thoughtfully they're deployed.
As code begins to whisper into the ears of cabinet members and civil servants alike, the responsibility isn't to blindly follow—but to listen, validate and act wisely.
This article was co-written with CEO and cofounder Amber Nigam, a Forbes Business Council member.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
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