Now, artificial intelligence to help spread access to govt schemes

Beneficiaries will be prompted to join other schemes on meeting criteria

The government is planning to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) to spread the reach of government schemes.

It has prepared a blueprint for the next phase of accelerated digitisation of public services by powering it with AI to help citizens find government schemes they are entitled to.
 

Currently, citizens can access details of only the schemes they have signed up for. “The vision now is to enable citizens to discover what other schemes they are entitled to,” said a senior official of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), adding that this was consistent with the “overall idea to have a saturation of government schemes”.
 

Schemes are run by different ministries and it is cumbersome for citizens to go to them and figure out which ones they can avail themselves of, said the official.
 

“But it is easy for them to log on to an AI-powered platform and search for the schemes under various ministries and that is what we are working on.”
 

What’s more, the platform itself will help the citizen find out what other schemes the person may be entitled to. For instance, if the person has signed up for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, the AI-powered portal may ask her or him why she or he has not opted for the PM Awas Yojana. 

Or, if one has signed up for the PM Awas Yojana, one could be prompted to sign up for the Har Ghar Jal scheme too. “The goal,” said the official, “is that no citizen should be unaware of the government schemes to which he or she is entitled. That is the next stage which we hope to roll out after the general elections.”

Underlying the next phase of the expansion in public services is the success of the “India stack”, a collection of digital public infrastructure such as digital identification, payments, and data management. The stack includes layers such as e-sign, digital locker, and Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

India has tied up with 10 countries for implementing the stack to include their citizens in various areas. “Twenty-two other countries also want to sign an MoU with India, but for that we have to expand our ecosystem,” said the official.  

On regulating the use of AI, the official acknowledged that while the technology had the potential to do a lot of good, it could also do harm. “The cornerstone of our thinking is that we will move towards responsible and ethical AI, which implies a lot of self-governance, as my understanding of ethics could be very different from someone else’s. That is why we are making it mandatory that every AI model and AI-powered platform should be safe and trustworthy for our users.” he said.

In simple terms, says the official, “whether you are Google, ChatGPT, Meta, or Microsoft, you will be legally responsible for ensuring that users on the AI platform do not do anything criminal or impact its safety and trust”.

“Basically, they will be responsible for any bias or incorrect training of their model. It is not the government’s duty to be the arbiter between a person harmed and those who have harmed the person. It will be the court of law. Also, whether you call the platform a trial platform or a lab platform, the moment it is in the public domain and anyone is prejudiced, he or she can go to court.”