AI has been gaining ground in government, but readiness varies; so, while governments want to take advantage of the technology, adoption is lagging.
“Most governments don’t need just another panel on the future of AI,” OnGov founder and CEO Silas Deane said. Instead, they need practical models to use AI to solve actual problems, he said — within the constraints of public trust, legal requirements and procurement. University students want to work on government technology to support their communities, Deane said, so he established an environment in which students and government could work together to do that.
The gathering April 17, held at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), had state participation that included Pennsylvania CIO Bry Pardoe and multisector coalition HEAL PA, and the nonprofit Team Pennsylvania (Team PA). Private-sector partners included Amazon Web Services and OpenAI; UPenn sponsors included the Wharton School, Fels Institute of Government and Penn Venture Lab.
It provided an opportunity to “democratize the build” for government solutions, according to Pardoe, and to include college students, stoking their interest in the public sector early in their careers. Pennsylvania government has longstanding collaborative relationships with state universities to advance AI.
“We need you — everyone who can come to the table and bring lived experience, your talent, and the ability to move faster and more iteratively,” Pardoe said during the event.
REAL SOLUTIONS FOR REAL PROBLEMS
During 1776 Labs, the group working with HEAL PA Director Jesse Kohler was able to create a “legitimate prototype” to support Adverse Childhood Experience scoring and communications, Deane said: “They actually came up with the prototype, and now we’re going to work on actually launching it.”
The coalition promotes trauma-informed care across the state. Technology can support this, by helping build a more collaborative infrastructure into the HEAL PA platform, to increase communication and information sharing among groups throughout the state. Kohler’s goal coming into the event was to address disconnect between these groups.
Other participants brought different challenges to the event, with the goal of producing tangible solutions. The results did not have to be AI-powered, Deane said, although that may help address these challenges.
“The challenge I will be sponsoring is all about demystifying where you can go in order to access government services,” the CEO said.
Pardoe’s mindset on AI is that implementation requires hitting the right nail with the right hammer. To do this, she said, requires keeping a human in the loop during development. The event offered students a space to create prototypes “at a pace that has never been possible before,” she said, calling prototyping one of the "most powerful things" state government can do to explore AI applications.
There is a "burgeoning interest in the public sector" lately from students and others, Pardoe said, and events like this help connect government and community members to think differently.
For Team PA, 1776 Labs was a “Team PA bingo board,” President and CEO Abby Smith said, because it focused on tech enablement “at that intersection of government, private sector and academia.”
Team PA, a public-private partnership co-chaired by the governor, wanted to simplify applying for state funding, to help organizations and companies with limited capacity access resources more easily.
“I think of AI as a great way to reduce that barrier to entry — broadly speaking — to democratize what government is really set up to do,” Smith said. The event’s hands-on approach offered participants the chance to “try and fail forward,” Smith said — and enabled government types to explore and build together creatively with minimal risk.
OnGov’s work as a convener is unlikely to end with 1776 Labs; Deane said universities outside of Pennsylvania have expressed interest in hosting similar events to co-develop solutions for their communities. Students are “hungry,” he said, to help solve real government challenges.
Events closer to home, Deane said, may include one with Pittsburgh’s mayor and regional schools, which are already part of work to advance AI. In future events, Deane said he would like to involve more local government leadership.
Government technology should be “practical, deployable and actually useful” for the people who use it, Deane said, highlighting the cost of implementing expensive, massive solutions that do not work in certain government contexts. The goal here was to inspire people to work together to build targeted solutions for their own communities.
“We want to rethink how American government can be for the AI era,” Deane said.
