Public sector embraces gen AI, but faces security, skills and infrastructure gaps

More than eight out of ten (83 percent) public sector organisations now have a generative AI (gen AI) strategy in place, with 54 percent actively implementing, and 29 percent preparing for implementation, according to new research from Nutanix.

But the Public Sector Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) survey indicates there is much to do first. Seventy-six percent of IT decision-makers say their current infrastructure needs moderate to significant improvement to support modern, cloud native applications at scale.

The report revealed that public sector leaders are increasingly leveraging gen AI applications/workloads into their organisations. Real-world gen AI use cases across the public sector gravitate towards constituent/employee support and experience solutions (e.g., chatbots) and content generation.

However, concerns remain with 92 percent of public sector leaders highlighting the need for their organisations to do more to secure gen AI models and applications. The results of that need, according to 96 percent of respondents, is security and privacy becoming higher priorities for their organisations. 

“Generative AI is no longer a future concept, it’s already transforming how we work,” said Greg O’Connell, VP, federal sales, public sector at Nutanix. “Ninety-four percent of public sector organisations are already putting AI to work and expect returns in as little as one year. As public sector leaders look to see outcomes, now is the time to invest in AI-ready infrastructure, data security, privacy, and training to ensure long-term success.” 

Key findings from this year’s report include: 

• Gen AI solution adoption and deployment in the public sector will necessitate a more comprehensive approach to data security. Public sector respondents indicate a significant amount of work needs to be done to improve the foundational levels of data security/governance required to support gen AI solution implementation and success. Ninety-two percent of public sector respondents agree that their organisation could be doing more to secure its gen AI models and applications. But many IT decision-makers in the public sector are aware of this impending sea change, with 96 percent of respondents agreeing that gen AI is changing their organisation’s priorities, with security and privacy becoming higher priorities. 
• Elsewhere, 76 percent of respondents in the public sector believe their current IT infrastructure requires at least moderate improvement to fully support cloud native apps/containers. Furthermore, IT infrastructure investment was ranked as a top area of improvement among public sector respondents, a sign that IT decision-makers are aware of the need to improve. 
• Application containerisation and Kubernetes deployment are expanding across the public sector, with 96 percent of respondents saying their organisation is at least in the process of containerising applications. This trend may be driven by the fact that 91 percent of respondents in the public sector agree their organisation benefits from adopting cloud native applications/containers.