To accelerate economic diversification, boost resilience, increase social cohesion, enhance public services, in an age of accelerating demographic shifts, governments are turning to technology to govern and improve like never before, says Ramez T Shehadi at Accenture Global Lead.
Governments worldwide are facing challenges on multiple fronts, including the climate crisis and the resulting call for decarbonisation at scale, managing socio-economic fluctuations, as well as both global healthcare interdependencies and the intrinsic growth and aging demands of home populations, to name but a few. In addition, most GCC countries also face the challenge of diversifying their economies away from hydrocarbons.
To accelerate economic diversification, boost resilience, increase social cohesion and enhance public services in an age of accelerating demographic shifts, governments are turning to technology to engage, govern, serve, learn and improve like never before.
However, while there is great potential for technology to materially assist in confronting and addressing national and cross-border challenges, material difficulties prevail in assessing what technologies to adopt with an eye to what makes a significant impact, to whom, by when and how sustainably.
Furthermore, there is the challenge of balancing the simultaneous development and deployment of emerging technologies like generative AI that offer the prospect of positive step changes in productivity, education, and resource consumption but, if not addressed carefully, can do so negatively.
To boost capabilities, governments must engage a range of partnership models. Generally, public-private partnerships have been an effective instrument for delivering public services as governments can tap into innovation-led businesses with the ability and competitive edge to deliver services efficiently and cost-effectively.
There are several types of agreements, including build-operate-transfer, build-own-operate, build-operate-lease-transfer, among others.
Each has its fit and benefits, and there is no one-size-fits-all. Governments naturally must assess the needs and constraints at hand to determine which model will best support public service efficiency and quality.
Furthermore, these partnership models should be considered as part of a broader ecosystem in which policymakers, investors, businesses, NGOs and communities all have a contribution to make. At the same time, governments are responsible for fostering a culture of collaboration, promoting knowledge sharing and facilitating networking.
Challenges raised by growth of AI
Accenture’s report issued during the World Governments Summit 2024, How Can Government Agencies Responsibly Navigate the AI Landscape to Implement High Impact Generative AI Solutions?, shows that over the next three to five years, 99% of public sector leaders believe AI-powered software and services will enhance innovation and creativity in their organisations as well as the resources needed to do so.
But the report also warns that technology’s ability to transform public services brings with it the responsibility to manage generative AI ethically, mitigating the risks of unreliable outputs and implicit biases, workforce displacement and productivity upskilling, among others, while ensuring confidentiality, security and adherence to regulations.
In the case of generative AI, public sector leaders are typically concerned with operational-level considerations, such as intellectual property rights, transparency, and data privacy.
However, it is important for all governments – not just in the GCC – to consider the full breadth of challenges, including those faced by civilians and civil servants alike, who increasingly voice anxieties about employment and societal impact at large as labour demands shift away from highly-codified data-intensive industries and functions and our dependence on and exposure to technology and technological disruptions grow unabatedly.
This was evident during the recent disputes in the US film industry, which suggest the widescale integration of generative AI into systems and societies will be far from smooth.
The key for governments is to maintain ongoing dialogue, ensure responsible AI by design, maintain human oversight in AI applications, and continue investing in people under the assumption that generative AI will augment human capabilities rather than solely replace jobs in their entirety.
Technology adoption
GCC governments are embracing digitalisation as part of their national visions. For instance, under We the UAE 2031, which seeks to double the country’s GDP to AED 3 trillion over the next decade, the Emirates is building an advanced digital infrastructure to underpin a globally competitive digital economy.
The story is similar in Saudi Arabia, where at least 97% of government services, representing 6,000 services, have already been digitised.
Across the region, we see various platforms deployed to enable smart cities, digital public services and autonomous manufacturing, among other advances. Other platform examples making GCC governments more future-ready include generative AI-powered chatbots, digital twins, and edge computing, among several others.
While chatbots have been around for some time, they have traditionally tended to frustrate customers due to their rigidity, mechanical engagement and topical limitations. The dawn of generative AI will change that, empowering chatbots to become helpful extensions of organisations and government entities.
In fact, in Accenture’s Technology Vision 2024 report, we predict that by 2025, customers will be just as satisfied with chatbot agents as human agents and, in some cases, unable to readily tell the difference!
And by 2028, we think major corporations will have proprietary chatbots to assist with knowledge management, research, and task completion. We estimate that this technology has the potential to impact 44% of all working hours across industries, enable productivity enhancements across 900 different types of jobs and create $6 to $8 trillion in global economic value.
Similarly, digital twins, which leverage AI, IoT, machine learning and data analytics, have a key role to play in enhancing future readiness by enabling crisis simulations and testing new initiatives before implementing them, for instance.
Edge computing is another emerging paradigm that enables vastly greater processing speeds and volumes. Edge computing offers the opportunity for much more efficient decentralised data collection and analysis and rapid decision-making. This is especially useful to governments in areas such as disaster response. Natural disasters can be particularly devastating in rural areas where communications are limited.
Edge computing can empower responders to collect critical data on casualties, supplies, workforce and risk of future shocks before analysing the data and informing a response without the need for a rigid central command structure.
Use cases
One example is the Vancouver Airport Authority, which Accenture supported to deploy large-scale enterprise-grade digital twins to ensure success in environmental, social, and corporate governance use cases in a dynamic environment.
In the GCC, Dubai Municipality recently created a geospatial digital twin to enable planners to simulate different development scenarios and evaluate their impact on energy usage, traffic congestion, air quality, and other factors. This approach has the potential to rapidly accelerate sustainable urban development as well as the achievement of ESG goals.
Accenture delivered visitor-facing digital channels with services tailored to international visitors through Amal – an AI-powered chatbot developed in collaboration with Smart Dubai. The result was a seamless experience for some 25 million individuals from 192 countries, representing a truly world-first feat of digital prowess!
Similarly, we are engaging in PPPs in Saudi Arabia to help accelerate the Kingdom’s leadership pipeline to support Vision 2030. In partnership with Accenture and best-in-class partners, the MiSK 2030 Leaders Program powered by Esade combines a transformative curriculum with a world-class academic ecosystem to empower Saudis to take on senior national leadership roles in the run-up to Riyadh Expo 2030.
Another example of a globally significant PPP is the Centre for Urban Transformation of the World Economic Forum, which engages government, business, and civil society leaders on a variety of urban transformation topics, embodied carbon among them, to accelerate net zero nature positive solutions and spur innovation in cities.
The Centre’s Net Zero Carbon Cities Initiative, for example, aims to catalyse urban decarbonisation and resilience by shining a light on energy efficiency, clean electrification, and resource circularity solutions.
The initiative seeks to mobilise public-private collaboration, bridging the gap across the energy, built environment and transport sectors to achieve shared net zero ambitions in accordance with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Working in partnership with the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Urban Transformation since 2021, Accenture has launched a series of ground-breaking new digital tools to help cities access global best practices, benchmark progress, and develop customised roadmaps to advance long-term strategic goals on technology governance, decarbonisation and the transition to more sustainable urban mobility.
In the UAE, for instance, Accenture partnered with government stakeholders for Expo 2020 Dubai to create engaging digital experiences for millions of customers worldwide. The challenge was significant: Expo 2020 required seamless integration of the many complex systems and applications in play from the core and across the hundreds of pavilions and thousands of stations.
A wide range of informative, interactive and transactional digital services were needed to enable personalised, unique and hyper-relevant experiences.
Looking ahead
Accenture is one of the few preeminent institutions in the world that can provide full-fledged operating innovations and capabilities from ideation to operations for clients all around the world. Governments in all forms, from the national to state and municipal and, as a result, their respective constituents, are major beneficiaries of the strategy and management consulting, technology deployment and system integration, functional operations, industrial innovation, and interactive customer journey and creative product design capabilities of the firm.
These capabilities can be brought to bear individually or in concert to help governments achieve their strategic national objectives and obligations while continually improving the relevance, experience and impact of public services.
