Understanding How to Leverage AI to Improve Public Services
Around the world, governments are considering how to responsibly use AI to meet the needs of their constituents.
Ontario’s Grey County wanted to do the same. The County’s Digital Service Working Group reached out to Code for Canada to explore how AI could improve the design and delivery of their resident-centric services.
The Challenge
Code for Canada’s team only had two 90-minute sessions to guide the Digital Service Working Group through the current state of AI technology and explore how it could be applied in their unique context.
Our Software Developer Chapter Lead Russell Hoy and Senior UX Designer Jesse Hammond got to work designing two workshops that would make the most of our time with the Grey County staff.
Our Approach
Our team wanted to leave the Grey County staff with a strong understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of using AI to deliver public services.
In the first workshop, they walked staff through a primer on current AI technologies and led a brainstorming session on how they could be applied to improve public services.
The second workshop used Code for Canada’s Options Analysis framework to better understand which AI tools might best serve the County’s needs.
The Code for Canada team asked County staff to brainstorm positive headlines about an improved service. From there, they considered possible solutions and how technology (like AI) could play a role. Finally, they asked staff to consider how they might test an idea with users and use their feedback to inform a future solution.
The Outcome
The workshops gave Grey County staff a better understanding of current technologies on the market and a framework for understanding how to assess their needs and determine which technology might serve them.
“The approach in session two to identifying, understanding and workshopping a real problem was great and has practical application outside of AI considerations,” shared a member of the Grey County team.
Interested in learning more about leveraging AI in a public sector context? Get in touch today.
