Adopting Industry Best Practices Key to Accelerating Federal AI Deployment

An executive from the General Services Administration’s IT Modernization Centers of Excellence said adopting best practices from the industry is a common theme among federal agencies wanting to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence.

According to Anil Chaudhry, one way to speed up federal AI adoption is by taking existing solutions in the private sector and modifying them to meet distinct agency needs, GovernmentCIO Media & Research reported.

“So it’s about leveraging commercial solutions and expertise from industry to deliver this enterprise-level transformation,” Chaudhry told attendees at the GovernmentCIO Media & Research Data Insights virtual summit.

While the approach requires thoughtful calibration on the part of agencies, taking a page from private sector companies reduces the time and resources needed to deploy an AI solution.

Chaudhry explained that the usual approach of partnering with agencies to develop solutions normally takes years before coming to fruition. However, he said adopting existing solutions allows agencies to deliver results in as fast as six months.

He further encouraged suggesting proven AI solutions to any agency, as it is likely that the core of the issues across the federal government are parametrically similar.

During the summit, Chaudhry also touched on the importance of developing objective data models that AI relies on.

He said there should be methods in place to prevent biases from being built into datasets and eventually compromising AI’s data analytics capabilities.

Teams looking to adopt AI solutions should consider what solution they want to implement and what the algorithms are supposed to look like, he added.