From artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital assistants that guide citizens through state portals to digital twins that model transportation infrastructure, state and local governments are finding practical pathways to put AI to work.
Their progress hinges on building partnerships, addressing data and infrastructure challenges, and investing in people as much as in technology, government and industry experts shared in a recent MeriTalk webinar, Accelerating AI Adoption: Progress and Opportunity, featuring Craig Orgeron, executive director and state chief information officer, Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services; John Peter “JP” Marcelino, federal joint solutions manager for AI and machine learning and digital twin at Dell Technologies; and Ryan Simpson, chief technologist for federal partners at NVIDIA.
AI’s iPhone moment
While AI has been part of government operations for decades – think early computer vision applications at the U.S. Postal Service – the emergence of generative AI has dramatically expanded its reach.
“Once we saw that ChatGPT moment – the iPhone moment of AI – people had the capabilities in their hand to have a conversation with a model that can … understand things at the human level,” said NVIDIA’s Simpson. “It’s really exciting to see the public sector … really starting to come to grips with this and starting to see ways to incorporate it.”
For Dell’s Marcelino, this shift has turned AI from an abstract concept into a tangible tool, evidenced by the growing number of agencies creating AI centers of excellence to facilitate adoption and share best practices.
Mississippi’s ground-level view
In Mississippi, AI efforts began with citizen service enhancements. The state’s digital government portal, mississippi.gov, uses an AI-powered assistant to guide constituents. Internally, state employees are using AI for routine activities such as document summaries and policy reviews.
Bigger opportunities come from scaling those capabilities into enterprise systems, Orgeron noted. “We see AI being baked into fraud, waste, and abuse [identification] systems. There’s been a lot of conversation in Mississippi about how we augment our cybersecurity efforts. We really think AI could be a way for us to scale cyber services pretty quickly and dramatically,” he said.
Mississippi is also exploring AI-driven infrastructure planning, from transportation to emergency management. “Our departments of transportation and emergency management are really using some of these tools from a resiliency or digital twin aspect,” Orgeron said.
Collaboration’s impact
Accelerating AI adoption requires collaboration across government and industry, the experts emphasized.
In Mississippi, that collaboration includes two statewide AI consortiums, and partnerships with industry and academia to grow the AI workforce, including a recent MOU with NVIDIA to expand AI education, promote research collaboration, enhance workforce development and drive economic development through AI integration, Orgeron said.
Groups like the National Association of State Chief Information Officers and the Center for Public Sector AI are essential for information sharing, Orgeron noted. “This innovation is eclipsing what traditional IT could ever do,” he said. “Governments need deep and thoughtful partnerships to carry it forward.”
AI’s roadblocks
Agencies face myriad hurdles on the road to enterprise AI deployment – many familiar to state and local IT leaders.
Marcelino pointed to three: lack of AI expertise, poor data quality and siloed data, and lack of physical infrastructure designed for AI workloads.
To help governments overcome those barriers, Dell and NVIDIA partnered on the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, a full-stack solution designed to simplify deployments.
“It’s a production-level, ready-to-go set of architecture and software in essentially a turnkey offering,” Marcelino explained. “It allows agencies to focus more on use cases and outcomes because you have that foundation [in place].”
The AI factory approach is about risk reduction, Simpson said. “The last thing we want [government] to do is spend two years buying a bunch of software trying to figure out how to get it to work. So what we do is experiment with those different combinations, find good pairings, and make those recommendations as part of reference architectures.”
Beyond infrastructure, workforce readiness is imperative. Mississippi is building AI literacy from K-12 through higher education, supported by its consortia and industry partners. “I really think the state is doing it right … really looking at K-12 schools, community colleges and higher education entities to help us get there. Our two consortiums are almost icing on the cake,” Orgeron said.
Simpson underscored the need for long-term planning: “It’s gotten to the point now that we’ve had to give multi-year roadmaps so people can be prepared. If you’re building for what’s coming today, you’re still going to be behind.”
Experts’ advice
Orgeron recommended pragmatism to his peers, whether they’re just starting out with AI or building momentum. “Start small and scale fast,” he said. “Start with pain points to work out use cases … invest in data readiness. Upskilling is non-negotiable. And don’t let procurement be a bottleneck.”
Partners can help, all along the way, Marcelino said. “Just know you’re not in it on your own.”
Watch the webinar: Accelerating AI Adoption: Progress and Opportunity.