AI-Driven Public Sector Innovation with Lax Gopisetty

Jeff Kavanaugh: I am Jeff Kavanaugh with the Infosys Knowledge Institute. I'm here with Lax Gopisetty, CEO of Infosys Public Services, to discuss AI for the public good. The landscape of US public services is undergoing a revolution-ary transformation, fueled by tech and shaped by disruptive social pressures. At the federal, state, and local levels, artificial intelligence is enhancing efficiency, accessibility, and effectiveness. This has led to a profound shift in how public services can be planned, delivered, and experienced. This discussion explores the pivotal role of AI in driving these changes, and the future possibilities it and related change holds for public good. Lax, thanks for being here.

Lax Gopisetty: Thanks, Jeff. Nice to be with you again. Great to be talking on the topic of AI.

Jeff Kavanaugh: First topic, when we spoke before, you'd mentioned this concept of public enterprise innovation. And you first think, its public enterprise innovation, it's an oxymoron, but explain.

Lax Gopisetty: Great point to start with, Jeff. So, the concept of public enterprise and innovation in my view is about three-folds. In the world I see this as a three-prong approach. There is a public enterprise, private enterprise, and a citizen enterprise. And traditionally in '60s and '70s, social public enterprise was the torchbearer on innova-tion-building, and they were the ones who build the initial innovation.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Manhattan Project, space programs.

Lax Gopisetty: Space programs and fundamental computing technologies. DARPA and ARPA. So, it built, and then private enterprise has now distributed it to the citizens, and citizens were only consuming it. That's how the pattern has happened. And in 2020 or 2010 in Gen Z's model, where citizen enterprise started developing innovation, that's why you have the Ubers of the world, blockchains of the world, and now the AIs of the world. So, the entire internet era has democratized the innovation from large capital expenditure public enterprise to a citi-zen enterprise.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Even that was a two-step thing, wasn't it, because the internet initially, it was this B2C model where everyone could plug in, they could buy things, they could see things.

Lax Gopisetty: Exactly.

Jeff Kavanaugh: And then these platforms came up, internet 2.0 if you want to call it that, where you have the platforms, they can connect into and be part of an innovation culture.

Lax Gopisetty: Exactly. So that innovation has been democratized so much, and that is a good thing why we are here. The key element, the inflection point I call it today, is two points. One, the innovation which is happening in the citizen enterprise requires a huge amount of governance to make sure it is purposed for the right way, and it can deliver the right intent and right goods.

Jeff Kavanaugh: You want to open it up, and yet you also want to govern it.

Lax Gopisetty: You want to govern it.

Exactly. And hence today, in the social world, any country's government is probably rightly positioned to do a better governance than any other entity. So hence the first is the governance part of the government, which is very critical. And second, government also is going to use this technology to really bring new equality en-richment to all the citizens. So, every time technology has built a new equilibrium, whether it's internet era, to mobile era, to AI era now.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Or even before that, just the roads, physical roads.

Lax Gopisetty: Exactly. It's always-

Jeff Kavanaugh: Access to electricity.

Lax Gopisetty: There you go.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Going on a little digression for a second, growing up in a farm area, electricity, phone service, that just didn't happen. There were government programs to make sure there was equal access.

Lax Gopisetty: Exactly. So, the AI also is in that zone, and to give that equal access and make sure the government is closer to citizens, citizens have access to government, hence the innovation within the government is important. In the digital governance need to be taken care of, not the physical governance alone. And the AI is going to pretty much see or accelerate the pace of establishing digital public infrastructure. What you spoke about, electricity, roads were physical infrastructure, and we are in the digital world, and it is going to be digital pub-lic infrastructure and governments are going to take a very, very pivotal role and a leading role in establishing that across.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Let's get specific. Let's take the bane of many people's existence, the old department of motor vehicles. Get-ting licenses. That's just an example of a government form where people used to have to go stand in line. Now most of its online. Do you have any examples of things like that where it's making a difference?

Lax Gopisetty: Sure. A lot of things are in early stages, but I'm happy that public enterprise, different departments are actu-ally imbibing that to see what use cases can be defined. There is actually an entire website about AI for gov-ernment, and every department is putting the use cases. I go through a few of them, so take Veteran Affairs. It is one of the largest healthcare service providers for the veterans, and veterans have different disabilities. So, they are actually trying to see how we use AI to understand and deliver better healthcare for the veterans than what they could have done physically. So, the data set and AI is going to help them to give them more pointed solutions. Amtrak has got a huge number of budgets allocated and they're trying to uplift their entire experience on rail journey and upgrade their infrastructure. AI is going to play and bring how a user experi-ence, what you get in airlines, back into Amtrak.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Hopefully they add a little extra budget for that, because as a personal paying customer Amtrak in the past, if things go well, they go well. If they don't, you're there for a while. So, they could improve that. But again, it's a good example where I believe that, at least from my own experiences with it, that the information available and the opportunities to enrich this physical asset, are huge.

Lax Gopisetty: Huge. I'll just give you another example. USPS, our friendly neighborhood service every day we get, and they deliver America to individual homes every day. They're upgrading their entire fleet into EV models, elec-tric vehicles. And they're upgrading their entire operation process to make sure it is sustainable, and they can do better delivery. In this process, the entire technology infusion is significantly... Significant portion of it is technology infusion, then the traditional what USPS used to deliver. Like this, almost every department of, I would say, federal, state, and local, you mentioned about DMV, right? I'll give you an example in DMV.

Today, we still go through long lines in DMV to get whatever we need to get, whether it's a license renewal or your registrations or whatnot. They're actually using this technology to start proactively ascertaining to see how many transactions they can do remotely, how much this information can be aided to the safety depart-ment, how much this can be aided to reduce hazards in the society. So, a lot of this information and interop-erability between the departments is very huge. Earlier it is in public enterprise, most of the data is in siloed mode. Within the department and outside the department, if you remember the 9/11 story after that is where the DHS was created, Homeland Security was created, and that intention was to create a lot better interop-erability. But those were physical departments. Today the AI kind of technology is built on the richness of da-ta and interoperability.

Jeff Kavanaugh: So, what about cyber? What are you seeing, talking to the heads of these massive government organiza-tions, about how they're dealing with privacy and security?

Lax Gopisetty: So, privacy, both of them are, I would say, for every CIO it's a top number one dimension. Luckily, I would say they have not progressed on cloud adoption fully yet. They're not progressed on mobile adoption fully yet. They're in a different journey of it. So, they're making calculated adjustments to see, when they define the cloud architecture or mobility or internet on the AI now, including blockchains, they're actually bringing security as part of their design process with their thinking process. Is it fully there? No, but they're seeking for huge amount of help by private enterprises, like Infosys and others, to help them to go through and navigate that journey. Infosys has something like secure by design, privacy by design, and governments are recog-nizing that that's an important element. But are they ready, fully fungible, flexible, adaptable at speed? No. That's a journey which they have to go through, and that's what excites me of taking this role is, at least next decade or two, I see public enterprise is the thriving enterprise for every sovereign country.

Jeff Kavanaugh: You got a convert in me. I used to be with the small, small, small. Push everything out to private. You realize there are some problems and some challenges or scope that just transcends that private enterprise or the capitalistic model; that some, you do have this shared interest, that the government is a logical place for it. You mentioned privacy, security for the citizens. Let's follow the money, literally. The big bank, US Treasury, what's going on there and how are they adopting to this new world?

Lax Gopisetty: So, US Treasury is one of the largest revenue bearers for the government, and if you have seen the news, they have added, I think, some few thousand people in the last six months or nine months to process the pending tax files. And they're still doing the manual effort part of it, but in parallel, they're also doing the tech-nology transformation part to see how can they use AI in the use case to allow most of the citizens, who file the regular taxes, not complex multiple addendums, but a regular taxes, to be able to file where they don't need to go through third party tools, but IRS can work with them and say, "Hey, here is your data. It's pre-filled for you. You just validate and submit."

Jeff Kavanaugh: What do you see are big areas in the US government where technology and the kind of work that you're do-ing can attack some of the waste, maybe channel that back for good?

Lax Gopisetty: Certainly, it's a journey which has to go through because the public enterprise has been working in certain format for more than 40, 50, 60 years. So, it takes time to change. But there are two, three change catalysts I see. One: they're struggling to get the new entrance into it, so they're also hiring the younger population into the public sector across the departments. So that actually infuses a good change. Their CIOs and the entire tech departments are moving from support roles to enabler roles. So, they have started moving into, okay, we are going to take a leap on the business plans and the business imperatives on the strategic plans. And if you see even the demographics of that, quite a few of the CXOs in public enterprise are coming from the pri-vate enterprise background. So, there is an element of change with that people. The third: the ecosystem of citizens trying to push the government for additional governance, additional accountability, additional respon-sibility, asking for free information acts, all those things are helping people to, not question per se, but con-structively push the government to operate in a much better way.

Jeff Kavanaugh: One big challenge I wanted to toss out and get your opinion on is continuity. Good news is we have elections frequently. Bad news is that missions can change, budgets can change. How do you see this journey being successful despite literally changes in people that are running local, state, federal, whether they're elected officials in legislature or they're executive branch?

Lax Gopisetty: I have two points which gives me huge confidence. Across the world today, based on what is happening in different countries, good, bad and stuff, every country is trying to focus on self-resiliency, and US is no differ-ent in that it has been in that journey for long, and it is continuing to be there is what I believe. When you're trying to work on self-resilience, you are infusing a lot of your resources into making sure we are self-resilient. So that is one.

Second: most of the resilient resources is techies’ part of it. They don't have a choice but to invest in tech and that's the only way it'll work in the current scheme of things. Otherwise, citizens will push for it, policymakers will push for it, private enterprises will push for it, and it's an ecosystem. You can't exist without only one thing. Both of this gives me a huge confidence that, irrespective of where the leadership changes happens because of elections, the actual operational elements and mission elements continue to stay on, and these are 10, 20 years missions. So hence I kept myself and say, this is at least a two decades of pivotal role for public enter-prises to play in the innovation agenda.

Jeff Kavanaugh: As you were talking about the partnership, I was thinking public private. In a way, as the public becomes self-resilient, the private is connected more and more globally, so it's almost as if one complements the other because that way you don't get too much of an isolationism, even if you trended that way, because you do have operations in different countries. It's almost like that supply network, the global corporate structure, blended with the local needs, hopefully the best of both worlds serving citizens and consumers.

Lax Gopisetty: True. No, you are right. And this is a question of, when we talk about interoperability, we talk about systems interoperability. These are country's interoperability, these are societies' interoperability, citizens' interopera-bility, and all these things are being enabled because of the tech today, and that's why I go back to, physical infrastructure has brought the world together in '60s, '80s, across the world, at least majority of portions of the world. And now it is digital public infrastructure is going to bring the world together.

Jeff Kavanaugh: And I'm seeing that a lot at the World Economic Forum, and some of the work that we're doing there with smart cities, as well as trying to share good practices around cities. We waited long enough, every one of these discussions has to have AI in it somewhere. So, let's talk about your take on artificial intelligence and what it means for the public sector.

Lax Gopisetty: As I said, the campaign which we are launching is AI For Public Good, is about the profoundness of AI is so huge. It's essentially harnessing the amount of information and data which produced in so many years, and continue to produce, and how do you create new possibilities with that? Whether it is you are creating better weather results for individual farmers, whether it is creating a good health treatment for people who cannot really travel, through remote health management dimension. Or you can define it to how can you file taxes, simplified tax code basis through AI. Or you can look at even defense missions to see how does defense to-day... Defense is becoming almost like an unmanned defense warfare or missions for them.

It's all happening because of the way the devices keep talking more, and that's what the AI is being built into it. So, it's a huge, profound influence, I would say, AI will have in public governance and public enterprise, hence good for public. And that governance will play a huge role in making sure the benefits of AI is going to be delivering good for public rather than the bad side. Now if I just go double click on the tech itself, today we are talking about generative AI, more of a second generation model. This is going to take into more au-tonomous mode in the next set of evolutions, and this is going to be very fast evolutions.

Jeff Kavanaugh: They call it the "why," purpose. Let's talk about how purpose and getting the citizens on board and under-standing that purpose can do, whether it's AI For Public Good or just overall getting, that value out there.

Lax Gopisetty: It is absolutely, in my mind that is probably the number one dimension of it, and the purpose, I believe if the purpose is large enough, people will come together achieving that common purpose. If purpose is defined as a small component, then people potentially will have a conflict.

Jeff Kavanaugh: For you as the CEO, the leader of Infosys Public Services, knowing that yes, you could implement tech and probably produce a lot of savings, how can you take that concept of purpose and help the US public sector achieve a better sense of purpose and in effect generate more value and actually more respect in the market and better society?

Lax Gopisetty: It's initial thoughts right now. So, we are going to evolve building an ecosystem around this. So, we are going to work with NGOs, academic institutions, different agencies in federal, state, local, and different, the labs which you talked about. Because all of them are trying to work on the same concept but bring them together to see how you create a public good and a purpose for each one based on the agency and intention, what they have. Is it a US-level mission? No, it is going to be very executable purposes, I would call it, not just purely a marketing campaign. And these executable purposes are at an agency level, at a specific service to citizen level. And there it's not about we alone trying to drive across, but we are going to bring the ecosystem together to start driving that across.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Well, it's interesting, because the partnerships, and then it sounds like you're the orchestrator. That word's coming up more and more.

Lax Gopisetty: That's the way we want to play into this, is an orchestrator with the right thing. And if I look at Infosys's back-ground back in India, we have actually evolved as an organization with the same thought process, where we were able to influence some of our stakeholders, influence the other, building of a fundamental public infra-structure. Infosys came up of carbon-neutral, carbon positive very early on. So, the belief of the organization.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Practically, too.

Lax Gopisetty: Practically.

Jeff Kavanaugh: It wasn't just offsets. It was actually done right. And that's where practical sustainability... I think if some of those practical approaches can be infused into public sector here.

Lax Gopisetty: Absolutely. So as an organization, foundation principles, we've been always first principle to do a public good and social impact and create a value and deliver the business part of it. So, the same value system is what we are trying to infuse, channelize that into the public enterprise. Of course, we are going to go through a learning curve in assembling these stakeholders and ecosystem buildup, but our intent is to really take this AI For Public Good as a broad campaign. I'm sure we will make some impact, if not a large impact, but we will make this as a momentum.

Jeff Kavanaugh: What's the number one thing you'd like to accomplish in the next six months to jump start or accelerate this journey?

Lax Gopisetty: To start with, we want to do two things. We want to make sure there is a purpose charter defined and ac-cepted too few of the early adapter agencies who will allow... Our existing customers could join along with us. That's the first thing. Second, we want to establish the technology, citizens and public enterprise cohort to start driving this in a three-party model. So, we will go through some NGO.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Forums, round tables.

Lax Gopisetty: Forums, round tables, technology partners to be part of the technology journey into this, and early catalyst agencies who are willing to take onto this purpose. And we are working with quite a few state agencies and some quasi-agencies, and we want to bring that cohort to say, okay, we can establish and start defining. So, we're talking to one state on building a digital vault. Now that's a first step to make sure, okay, there is a way to bring safety and identification to citizens on creating a digital vault for themselves. So, your identification is within your digital footprint. So that's the first step. Smaller steps, but we will start taking those smaller steps and making them happen.

Jeff Kavanaugh: Great. Well, that's a good one to end on. Thanks, Lax, for sharing your perspective and insights. I'm Jeff Ka-vanaugh, and as we like to say at the Knowledge Institute, keep learning and keep sharing.