Utilization of AI in public administration(2/2)Establishment of Digital Government urgently required

This article is written by Mr. Tadashi Shikimori, Chief Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies（NEC Group）

Public-private partnership to establish basic platform

It is essential that we recognize the utilization of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the public administration is one part of Digital Transformation.　Among many countries Estonia is the top runner in the world in the area of promoting digital transformation and digital government. 

Estonia have been enhancing the basic platform for digital government under public-private partnership by developing their own electronic ID (e-ID) and data exchange platform (X-Road).

Estonia have already completed the digitalization or on-line systematization up to 99% of their public administration service under X-Road platform where the data is exchanged in collaboration among government sectors, local public sectors and private sectors, and under e-ID system where electronic signature and electronic authentication are realized.

People can make a number of applications through one specific portal and the service is available throughout all day long. As for the tax declaration 95% of process has been digitalized or made on line, and the time necessary for the declaration can be only 3 minutes. The time for users to receive the refund of tax is shortened from one month to only 5 days, benefitting users substantially.

On top of that it contributes also greatly to reduction of the cost and shortening of the working hours at the side of public administration. As for the registration of new company the process is fully digitalized and is made on line, thus shortening the time for the process from 5 days to minimum 18 minutes. 99% of registration of new companies is now made on line. Estonia is now even considering the introduction of AI authentication system for identification of applicant in the public administration service.

Bulk Budget for total evolution
In such advanced countries in the area of digital government as USA, Singapore, and UK one specific organization directly under the head of the Government is normally fully responsible for promoting the digital government under one bulk budget. They are nicely and completely establishing public-private partnership where talented staff are recruited and well-balanced service design to incorporate users’ needs.

In USA the experimental projects of AI have been progress in the area of social issue of crime prevention. For example Chicago Police Department introduced crime prediction system in the south side of the city and the system contributes to the reduction of shooting incidents by 39% and of murders by 33%. The system experimentally employed by Chicago Police Department is the crime prediction system developed by the start up named Azavea.

The system finds certain pattern of crimes by analyzing the variety of data such as the time of occurrence of crime within a day, frequency of occurrence by seasons, weather conditions, regional economic circumstances, crime data in the past and so on.

Utilization of AI for crime prevention

A similar project to utilize AI for crime prevention is also under development in Germany. In Japan the utilization of AI by police department is only limited to the auxiliary role where AI is utilized to give assistance to identify criminals out of image data. In USA they are positive in utilization of AI to predict crimes and to prevent crimes which characterizes USA’s policy.

On the other-hand there is an argument that wrong result is derived by AI to select innocent people for those to be under criminal surveillance if the analysis is made based on biased or unbalanced data of human attributes. In order to avoid such wrong results it is essential and important that data and prediction algorism is well and properly prepared and transparent.

The utilization of AI in the public administration service is one part of total digital evolution and it is still at earlier stage. The expectation to utilize AI in the public administration service is growing very high from the points of better productivity and better efficiency, and from the point of solving social issues. In Japan it is also expected that the public service is reorganized and the digital government is further promoted and accelerated so that users are benefitted with better service and convenience with less social issues to suffer.