3.3 | Make your job easier

Manuel Paolillo talks about using ChatGPT in the public service Introduction

Welcome to the session. I have five minutes with my experience to explain how I see the added value.

The first point is: what's my job? As a director, general manager, my job is to help my staff obtain results, outputs, and outcomes, and remove obstacles. So I have a lot of policy advisors working in the department, and the point is that we have also to manage the expectations of politics of the minister. So it's not always an easy game. Also, even though we are a small country, Belgium, we are dealing with complexity regarding social security. It means that we have a lot of networks of different actors, complex legislation, and policies. I think it's more or less the work of a policy advisor today.

My philosophy

My philosophy is that we can always improve ourselves. It's very important to see where is the added value of public services. I think that's the core message. And if ChatGPT or another AI can help us in doing this, I think it's important.

What seems also very important to me, maybe of the utmost importance, is our critical thinking. We have to adopt a humble attitude toward what's happening. And that's why I have this quote of Socrates; it was a long time ago, but I think still valid today. We have to accept that we know nothing. So it's a humility that we have to share regarding these new trends. And this will be also my attitude regarding ChatGPT.

Meta use case

So first, the meta use case, the lessons learned, and then the next step. So I asked ChatGPT, "So, who am I? I am the director general at the Federal Public Service at the Ministry of Social Security. I've been invited by Apolitical to intervene on the added value regarding what kind of services we can offer as public civil servants. Could you help me?"

And it was quite interesting. I made the exercise, and I challenge also you to do it because it's very interesting and you have to feed it in order to obtain a good answer. Well, the first point was to elevate the mental and effective workload that we have.

Also, we can avoid repetitive tasks for civil servants. It can help you in pre-draft work and reports. Then, it can also help you in drafting notes but also improve velocity to citizen questions. It can help us avoid ping pong games because we have a lot of institutions, which could be competent, but with artificial intelligence, one point is that we can avoid this ping pong game between institutions.

It can help also in training for civil servants. For example, I made a real case regarding languages because, in Belgium, we have to learn several languages. We have at least two languages, and we can learn also the other language with ChatGPT, which is very interesting. And I think that the most important thing is that you have to use it as a kind of role-playing game, as a coach, which can help you in coaching you in the output or the outcome that you have to obtain.

Further use cases

Now, in the day-to-day work of policy advisors, what I also tried is regarding how ChatGPT can help me in structuring a workshop for the staff who had to organise a workshop in two hours. And it made very valid proposals. On Valentine's Day, I also made a poem about social security. It can be found on LinkedIn.

It helped me also in drafting my first notes and redrafting emails in order to be more clear regarding my messages. I think also it can help you to build a consensual vision because I'm working also at an international level. And if we have to share a common vision, it has to be very consensual. ChatGPT is very consensual as such, so it can help you also regarding this. It helped me also regarding social media messages with impact. For example, can you add some impactful messages regarding social media on our business, and it is very useful work regarding this.

Future use cases

Now, which kind of next steps could happen? I think that reports, you know, as policy advisors, we are overwhelmed by reports. It can really help your reports, for example, by recording team meetings and making slides. It's always a pain in the neck to make slides. It can help you also to make slides. It can also automate the management of your email. To archive, for me, it's not very energising, this kind of task. Maybe tomorrow we can ask also ChatGPT to do it.

But regarding more policy issues, I think that it can help you also to make accurate policy reports, for example, regarding new government policy recommendations. And regarding the other reports that you have already drafted, how can you see the difference and where we can have added value regarding this policy area? They are also valid, I think, regarding this. And also making action plans for policy design. I think with clear calendars, I have an example for this, it can really help the staff.

Now, I think that we have public policy issues, but regarding social security, we have also the management of social benefits or other requests. It can answer beneficiaries' questions in a very efficient way, connecting to anonymous data in order to make data analysis. Here maybe we have a point regarding whether the data analysis job will still be an option in the coming years.

It also helps you to make different requests for beneficiaries because one of the problems of citizens is that they have forms to fill. And in order to avoid pre-structured forms, ChatGPT can help you also to avoid the gaps, making the user experience more useful. And I think that we will have more points in the coming year, coming months.

Limits and challenges

My main message would be that as civil servants, it gives you maybe a supplement of spark, sense, soul, or wisdom. It is also very important for civil servants to invest in this conversational AI. Because we don't have to let only markets investigate in this area.

I think that public services also have to be very careful about this. It can create added value, but there are limits and challenges. And of course, we will have to discuss about productivity because we will obtain a gain in productivity. And so what does it mean? Does it mean that we have to replace jobs or that we have to help people to work with new tools? I think that's very much a societal issue, not only a corporate issue.

In some ways, it's a monkey, so it's not so intelligent, ChatGPT. So we have also to be careful about how we use this kind of AI. It's a black box, and that's really a problem because you don't know how they use your data. So you have also to be very careful when you use this, and you have also always to give context if you want to use it. Give context because otherwise, it's not relevant. And don't use it as a scholar, please, don't use it as a Google search engine. But use it maybe more as a content creator.

Next steps

Which next steps do I see for public service? I think that we need a regulatory framework regarding AI ethics and public services. It's really needed because if you are also an entrepreneur in the public, in the civil servants' sphere, you need also stability to run a business.

And if, on one day, we shut down everything regarding AI, you don't create stability for the business. So I think that's very important to have a regulatory framework regarding AI and ethics.

The second point: what will be needed is coaching, for civil servants and for the users of public services. Training, of course, in AI, but training also in critical thinking. This will be, I think, the next issue. And, we have also to be very inclusive in communication. We have to avoid cognitive bias because we have to also know who is behind AI.

Like the message I quoted from Socrates: We don't know anything, but we have to really be careful about who is also behind AI because we have also a certain vision of society in AI and in some corporations regarding AI.

And of course, we have, we have to secure the use of AI. We have to make sandboxes for civil servants in order to play with AI and see what's the added value of it. And a point regarding public procurement and the use of AI tools. Maybe what could be also needed is a toolbox in order to facilitate the work of civil servants and not make an extra burden regarding AI.

I think that's my last point regarding this. So thank you very much. Merci beaucoup.

This transcript comes from Lesson 3.3 of the Apolitical short course: Understand How AI Impacts You and Your Government.

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