Beat the odds on AI pilots: pair AI with Process Intelligence
The barrier to AI just dropped. With GSA offering access to AI chatbots for $1, agencies can spin up pilots in days. That speed is a gift - and a risk. A recent MIT study found that 95% of AI pilots miss expected returns. Budgets are tight, vacancies are real, and public expectations are rising. There's no room for waste.
The issue isn't the model - it's the process
AI fails in government when it's bolted onto broken workflows. Data is inconsistent, processes are undocumented, and problem statements are unclear. Add AI on top and you don't fix the issues - you lock them in. The result: higher cost, frustrated staff, and public skepticism.
Process Intelligence: the missing foundation
Process Intelligence (PI) gives leaders a data-driven view of how work actually flows. It surfaces bottlenecks, rework, hidden costs, and compliance risk. Think of it as a process X-ray that shows where change will stick and where it will stall. With PI, you can test improvements in a digital environment before committing budget and staff time.
Proof: Oklahoma's results
Oklahoma's Office of Management and Enterprise Services used PI with Celonis to analyze procurement and finance. The state identified inefficiencies and unlocked more than $10 million in value. With that foundation in place, they deployed an AI Copilot that gives procurement teams fast, accurate operational insight. Staff now make better decisions in real time while protecting service quality and taxpayer dollars.
Where to apply PI + AI now
- Procurement: Use PI to cut cycle time, remove duplicative reviews, and standardize approvals. Layer AI to recommend sourcing strategies and flag risk early.
- Fraud detection: Use PI to map benefits delivery and identify control gaps. Feed clean, structured data to AI models to detect anomalous claims without adding friction for eligible recipients.
- Customer experience: Under Executive Order 14058, PI pinpoints service breakdowns across channels. AI chatbots and assistants handle common questions while back-end workflows stay efficient and auditable.
Build it this quarter: a simple execution plan
- 1. Pick one high-volume process. Procurement, grants, permits, benefits, or contact center flows.
- 2. Instrument the workflow. Pull event logs from your systems (ERP, case management, finance) and define start/stop events.
- 3. Baseline KPIs. Cycle time, backlog, rework rate, unit cost, error/appeal rate, and compliance exceptions.
- 4. Run PI to map variants. Identify bottlenecks, redundant reviews, policy-driven delays, and data quality issues.
- 5. Fix the basics first. Standardize steps, remove low-value approvals, correct data fields, add guardrails.
- 6. Add AI where ROI is provable. Co-pilots for staff decisions, document summarization, routing, or risk triage - always with human-in-the-loop.
- 7. Measure, then scale. Compare pre/post KPI deltas, confirm savings, and formalize governance for the next rollout.
Risk, control, and trust
- Data quality: Fix at the source; PI will show you where bad data starts.
- Privacy and security: Segment data, apply least-privilege access, and log all AI-assisted actions.
- Auditability: Keep decision trails and model prompts/outputs for oversight.
- Change management: Train staff on new workflows; measure adoption, not just deployment.
Why this matters now
$1 chatbots make experimentation easy. They also make failure cheap - and frequent - if you skip the process work. AI alone won't fix broken processes. Pair AI with Process Intelligence and you get targeted wins, stable operations, and credible ROI.
A call to action
Pick one mission-critical process. Stand up PI. Prove the savings. Then add AI where it makes decisions faster, cheaper, and safer. The public expects modernization. Taxpayers demand results. AI is no longer optional - but without Process Intelligence, it's unlikely to succeed.
If your team needs focused upskilling to implement this playbook, explore curated AI programs by role at Complete AI Training.
Your membership also unlocks:
