AI-Driven Efficiency in Public Service: A Q&A with Nora Connor

We sat down with Nora Connor, Abt’s Director of Digital Science & AI, to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) is driving efficiency, streamlining government services, and giving citizens greater control over their data. With a focus on both strategy and real-world impact, Nora discusses AI’s potential to enhance public services for human flourishing—and how Abt is helping make it happen. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Q: How do you see AI fundamentally transforming the way governments serve their citizens? 

NC: AI is already changing how governments use data to make decisions, predict outcomes for beneficiaries, and ultimately provide better services to all. I think the biggest shift we’ll see is in how citizens interact with their own data, ensuring it’s used to improve their lives while maintaining privacy and empowering people to be involved in the decisions that impact them directly. 

Q: What sets Abt apart in the way it works with AI for government agencies? 

NC: One thing that distinguishes Abt is our expertise across multiple Health and Human Services agencies and their data. Historically, government data has been siloed by agency. Abt’s approach is to aggregate the data across agencies, removing redundancies, and also bringing in commercial data sets to get the full, well-rounded picture. We did this recently for a public health agency, and we found that commercial data often tells a different story than data collected by the government. We were able to use a combination of AI, hierarchical modeling, and automation – and to move from one-year-old data to same-day insights on infectious diseases. You need a lot of different skillsets to make that possible: AI experts, Bayesian statisticians, automation engineers, geospatial analysts, and epidemiologists. Abt has all of the above, and the platform and process to get it done quickly.

Q: What advice would you give agency leaders looking to implement AI? 

NC: Let me start by saying that many of Abt’s current AI projects are focused on increasing efficiency, such as checking written reports for compliance issues for Medicaid managed care or using AI-based simulation to understand how nursing home staffing levels can impact quality of care. Given that we’re doing AI today, my main advice for agency leaders is that they don’t need to wait to implement AI for this type of work, which can be transformative and free up their teams to focus on the work they’re passionate about.  

Q: As technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace, there are concerns about their ethical implications and risks. How can organizations ensure they’re using AI responsibly? 

We can mitigate risks while moving forward to take advantage of AI’s considerable benefits. That means getting the right governance processes in place, getting the right people, processes, and technologies in place to support agencies in their adoption of AI. 

NC: We’ve done this internally at Abt – getting our policies right, setting up an AI governance board, and creating AI sandbox environments to rapidly test and deploy solutions. So, we’re not just talking hypothetically about what the technology can do. We’re ready to help agencies solve real problems by using AI tools with a record of effectiveness. 

And to put this into practice, we use our Responsible AI Governance Dashboard, a tool that helps us enumerate tradeoffs, monitor model drift and decay, and ensure that projects are able to quickly have an impact and achieve their goals. 

Learn about Abt’s AI Governance Dashboard

Q: On a more personal note, if you could train AI to do one completely mundane task for you—something you’d never have to think about again—what would it be and why? 

NC: I am ready for the AI revolution in emails!  We already have automation and efficiency tools built into emails, with spam filters and business rules that can move emails into different folders for us. But I’m excited for the day when my virtual assistant can scan the emails I’ve gotten in the last day, summarize the information, give me a list of action items, and highlight areas where I need to focus my attention. We’re already on the cusp of this capability, and it’s going to revolutionize how we spend our time at work.

Want to chat? Email us at innovation@abtglobal.com