Introduction to

Algorithmic Government

Rajan Gupta
Saibal Kumar Pal
Introduction to Algorithmic Government
Rajan Gupta · Saibal Kumar Pal

Introduction
to Algorithmic
Government
Rajan Gupta Saibal Kumar Pal
Centre for Information Technologies Defence Research
& Applied Mathematics and Development Organisation
University of Nova Gorica New Delhi, India
Nova Gorica, Slovenia

ISBN 978-981-16-0281-8 ISBN 978-981-16-0282-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5

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 Dedicated to
My “Gurumaa” for holding my hand in Life,
My “Parents” for making me stand in Life,
My “Nephew” for making me strong in Life,
My “Brother & His Wife” for helping me progress in Life, and
My “Wife” for supporting and loving me unconditionally in Life!
—Dr. Rajan Gupta
Dedicated to the memory of my parents.
—Dr. Saibal Kumar Pal
 Preface

This book titled ‘Introduction to Algorithmic Government’ has got

three significant things to offer—Background to Algorithmic Govern-
ment, various Algorithmic Government applications around the World
& India, and potential use cases of Algorithmic Government around the
developing world in the near future.
Algorithmic Government or Government by Algorithm is an emerging
concept introduced around the world. It involves using Data Science
and Artificial Intelligence for decision making by the Government for
various services and processes. In some nations, even digitization has not
happened, but machines are ready to make decisions on behalf of humans
in others. On the one hand, many governments struggle to score high on
E-Governance Development Index by the United Nations. In contrast, on
the other hand, some countries are even approving the electoral candida-
ture of AI bots. This brings us to a position where we need to understand
how automated decision making is taking place around the world.
The first chapter covers the background on the usage of technology
for decision making. The second chapter discusses the core concepts of
the Algorithmic Government, various models associated with it, along
with the numerous advantages, disadvantages, challenges, limitations,
concerns, and audits related to it. Chapter 3 presents the various tech-
nologies which are used for implementing Government by Algorithms
around the world. The fourth chapter argues whether it is possible to
replace humans with machines. Chapter 5 presents various progressive

vii
viii PREFACE

steps taken worldwide concerning the automation of decision making in

the Public Sector. Chapter 6 showcases technological advancements and
decision making in a developing country like India across multiple sectors.
Chapter 7 presents various potential use cases that can be developed in
different domains, specifically for developing and under-developed worlds.
At the end of this book, multiple codes for prototypes of use cases from
Chapter 7 are presented for technology enthusiasts.
This book will serve as introductory material for the readers from
technology, public policy, and management fields. It will help develop
understanding around different concepts present for automated decision
making and usage of technology in the public sector as an advancement.
The reader should differentiate E-Governance as the digitization of the
Government processes, and Algorithmic Governance as the automated
decision making on behalf of the Government.

Nova Gorica, Slovenia Rajan Gupta

New Delhi, India Saibal Kumar Pal
 Acknowledgments

The authors of this book would like to gratefully and sincerely thank all
the people who have supported them during the journey of writing this
book, to only some of whom it is possible to mention here.
Primarily, the authors would like to thank their Ph.D. Supervisor—
Prof. Sunil Kumar Muttoo, for his valuable guidance and research direc-
tions in the field of Computer Science & Data Science. Then the authors
would like to thank current and former faculty members of the Depart-
ment of Computer Science, University of Delhi—Prof. Vasudha Bhat-
nagar, Prof. Punam Bedi, Prof. Naveen Kumar, Prof. Neelima Gupta, Mr.
P. K. Hazra, and Ms. Vidya Kulkarni. They helped provide infrastruc-
ture and resources related to Doctoral Research work, which was in Data
Science and E-Governance. The doctoral work became the basis for this
book.
The first author would also like to thank the Administrative and
Teaching Unit of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, University of Delhi,
under the guidance of Dr. Hemchand Jain, for providing their support
toward the writing of this book. Also, the first author would like to
acknowledge and thank Prof. Tanja Urbancic and Prof. Irina Cristea from
Centre for Information Technologies & Applied Mathematics, Univer-
sity of Nova Gorica for their valuable support during the final submission
of this book. The second author acknowledges the Defence Research &
Development Organization (DRDO) for its valuable support.

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the valuable contri-
butions from members of TCF Consultancy™—Mr. Shubham Gupta, Ms.
Kanika Gupta, Mr. Gaurav Pandey, Ms. Shreya Khurana, Ms. Himani
Girdhar, Mr. Hritik Kounsal, Ms. Iffat Aara, Ms. Muskaan Ratra, and Mr.
Tarun Garg. They all helped in information collection and case studies
validation using Python Programming.
Finally, this work would not have been possible without the invaluable
support from the publishing team of Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, esp.
Ms. Sandeep Kaur, Ms. Shreenidhi Natarajan, and Ms. Sagarika Ghosh.
This book also recognizes incredible support from the book’s endorsers,
and the authors’ guru, mentors, family, and friends. So the authors would
like to thank them all from the bottom of their hearts.
 Contents

1 Role of Technology in Decision Making 1

1.1 Background 1
1.2 Traditional Decision Making 3
1.3 Digitization of Government Services 4
1.4 Data Generation 8
1.5 Technology for Decision Making 9
1.6 Artificial Intelligence for Public Sector 12
References 14
2 Background of Algorithmic Government 17
2.1 Concept of Algorithmic Government 17
2.2 Models of Algorithmic Government 19
2.3 Advantages of Algorithmic Government 22
2.4 Disadvantages of Algorithmic Government 24
2.5 Limitations with Algorithmic Government 26
2.6 Practical Concerns with Algorithmic Government 27
2.7 Ethics with Algorithmic Government 28
2.8 Audits and Regulations with Algorithmic
Government 29
2.9 Governance Structure for Algorithmic Government 31
References 34
3 Techniques and Technologies 37
3.1 Artificial Intelligence 37

xi
xii CONTENTS

3.2 Machine Learning & Deep Learning 40

3.3 Blockchain 42
3.4 Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality (AR & VR) 44
3.5 Big Data 46
3.6 Cloud Computing 47
3.7 Data Lakes 48
3.8 Digital Twin Technology 49
3.9 Edge Computing 50
3.10 Granular Computing 52
3.11 Fog of Things (FoT) 53
References 54
4 Can AI Replace Government for Decision Making 57
4.1 Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans 57
4.2 Artificial Intelligence for Government & Politics 59
4.3 How AI Can Benefit the Government 61
4.4 Impact of AI on the Nature of the Government 63
4.5 Biasness Due to AI 64
4.6 Challenges for Government While Adopting AI 66
References 67
5 Applications of Algorithmic Government Around
the World 69
5.1 America 70
5.2 Asia 72
5.3 Australia 73
5.4 Africa 75
5.5 Europe 76
5.6 Policy Level Progress Around the World 78
5.7 Prominent Global Projects 80
References 82
6 Applications of Algorithmic Government in Different
Sectors 83
6.1 Introduction 83
6.2 Healthcare 85
6.3 Agriculture 88
6.4 Education 89
6.5 Mobility & Transportation 90
6.6 Law Enforcement 91
 CONTENTS xiii

6.7 Defense 92
6.8 Others 93
References 95
7 Potential Use Cases of Algorithmic Government 97
7.1 Media 97
7.2 Disaster Management 104
7.3 Education & Assessment 108
7.4 Entrance Exams and Admissions 115
7.5 Funding & Loans 124
7.6 Online Reputation Management 133
Further Readings 140

Appendix A: Python Code for Use Case 1—Media 143

Appendix B: Python Code for Use Case 2—Disaster

Management 151

Appendix C: Python Code for Use Case 3—Education &

Assessment 155

Appendix D: Python Code for Use Case 4—Entrance

Exams & Admissions 165

Appendix E: Python Code for Use Case 5—Funding &

Loans 175

Appendix F: Python Code for Use Case 6—Online

Reputation Management 183

Bibliography 193

Index 197
 About the Authors

Dr. Rajan Gupta is a Research and Analytics Professional and has

authored three books in the area of E-Governance and Data Science.
He has done his Ph.D. in the field of Data Analytics for Improve-
ment E-Governance in Developing Nations from the Department of
Computer Science, University of Delhi. He completed his Master in
Computer Application (M.C.A.) from the University of Delhi, Post-
Graduate Program in Management (PGPM) from IMT Ghaziabad
(CDL), and Executive Program in Business Intelligence and Analytics
(EPBABI) from IIM-Ranchi. He is NET-JRF qualified under Univer-
sity Grant Commission, India, and holds a certificate in Consulting from
Consultancy Development Centre (CDC), DSIR, Ministry of Science
and Technology, Government of India. He is one of the few Certi-
fied Analytics Professional (CAP-INFORMS) around the world and is
serving as ACB Member & CAP Ambassador in Asia Region. He has
been accredited with GStat from American Statistical Association (ASA).
He has industrial working experience with firms like Samsung and TCF
Consultancy™ in their research and analytics department. He is currently
associated as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Data Science and Data-
driven Modeling at the Centre for Information Technologies and Applied
Mathematics, University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. He is also working
as an Assistant with PhD at the School of Engineering and Manage-
ment, University of Nova Gorica, where he is involved in pedagogical
activities in computer science, data science and informatics. In the recent

xv
xvi ABOUT THE AUTHORS

past he has worked as Assistant Professor with Deen Dayal Upadhyaya

College, University of Delhi, India. He has also taught at the Department
of Computer Science (Faculty of Mathematical Science), University of
Delhi, India, and IMT—Ghaziabad, India to deliver lectures in Computer
Science, Data Science, Analytics, IT, and Management. His area of interest
includes Data Science, E-Governance, Algorithmic Government, Public
Information Systems, and Information Security. He has ten years of
combined experience in Research, Analytics, Consulting, and Teaching
and has over 75 publications at various national and international forums
in the form of books, chapters, journals, and conference papers.
He has recently contributed to the E-Governance Development Index
report by the United Nations (EGDI-2020). He is a member of the
reviewer panel of multiple international journals & conferences. He is
also an invited public speaker and has conducted Workshops & Semi-
nars on the usage of Data Science & Artificial Intelligence for Govern-
ments around the world. He has recently delivered a talk as a panelist on
Data Science Application for E-Governance on an international forum
sponsored by International Data Engineering and Science Association
(IDEAS), USA, and conducted a Workshop on ‘Inclusion of Marginal-
ized Communities’ through E-Governance at ICEGOV-2020 hosted by
United Nations University.

Dr. Saibal Kumar Pal is a Senior Scientist at Defence Research &

Development Organization (DRDO), Government of India, and has been
awarded ‘Scientist of the Year’ for his significant contributions in the
area of Information Security. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science
from the University of Delhi and is an Invited Faculty & Research Guide
at several national institutions. His areas of interest are Information &
Cyber Security, Computational Intelligence, Information Systems, and
Electronic Governance. He has more than 300 publications in books,
journals, and international conference proceedings. He has contributed
to a number of significant projects & international collaborations and is a
member of national advisory committees.
 Abbreviations

ADM Algorithmic Decision Making

ADRIN Advanced Data Research Institute
AG Algorithmic Government
AI Artificial Intelligence
ANN Artificial Neural Network
API Application Programming Interface
AR Augmented Reality
BIS Bank for International Settlements
CAIR Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
CEFR Common European Framework of Reference
CHW Community Health Workers
CSV Comma Separated Values
CT Computed Tomography
DL Deep Learning
DRDO Defence Research and Development Organization
E-Governance Electronic Governance
E-Government Electronic Government
G2B Government to Business
G2C Government to Citizens
G2E Government to Employee
G2G Government to Government
GAs Genetic Algorithms
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GLOFs Glacial Lake Outburst Floods
GST Goods & Services Tax
HART Harm Assessment Risk Tool

xvii
xviii ABBREVIATIONS

IaaS Infrastructure as a Service

ICT Information and Communication Technologies
IoT Internet of Things
ISRO Indian Space Research Organization
IT Information Technology
ITCZ Intertropical Convergence Zone
ITF International Transport Forum
KNN k-Nearest Neighbors
M&E Monitoring & Evaluation
ML Machine Learning
MORTH Ministry of Road Transport and Highways
NLP Natural Language Processing
NN Neural Network
NUSAP Numeral Unit Spread Assessment Pedigree
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OGD Open Government Data
PaaS Platform as a Service
PAIS Punjab Artificial Intelligence System
ROI Return on Investment
SaaS Software as a Service
SGD Stochastic Gradient Descent
SVM Support Vector Machine
TF-IDF Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency
TMH TATA Memorial Hospital
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
URL Uniform Resource Locator
VR Virtual Reality
WD Western Disturbances
WHO World Health Organization
YOLO You Only Look Once
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Algorithmic government service architecture (Source

Engin and Treleaven [2019, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org]) 2
Fig. 1.2 Traditional decision-making model for purchase
by a consumer (Source Xu and Chen [2017]) 3
Fig. 1.3 Policymaking cycle (Source Kolkman [2020]) 5
Fig. 1.4 Increasing digital services in India (Source Kaka [2020]) 6
Fig. 1.5 Digital adoption index (Source Kaka [2020]) 7
Fig. 1.6 Seven patterns of Artificial Intelligence (Source Walch
[2020]) 10
Fig. 1.7 Algorithmic decision making process (Source Author’s
Creation) 12
Fig. 2.1 Types of Algorithmic Government systems (Source Zarsky,
2016) 21
Fig. 2.2 Layered model for AI governance (Source Gasser &
Almeida, 2017) 22
Fig. 2.3 Zarsky’s classification of protestations to Algorithmic
Government (Source Zarsky [2016]) 26
Fig. 2.4 Audit framework (Source Raji et al. [2020]) 30
Fig. 3.1 What does an artificial intelligence system must do (Source
Author Creation) 38
Fig. 3.2 Set of rules in the form of a decision tree (Source Author
Creation) 39
Fig. 3.3 Decision-making model using AI (Source Author
Creation) 39

xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.4 Machine learning modeling process (Source Author

Creation) 41
Fig. 3.5 Blockchain-based process flow (Source Deloitte, 2018) 44
Fig. 3.6 Conceptual framework of big data and decision making
(Source Author Creation) 47
Fig. 4.1 Some functions that can be replaced by bots (Source
Author Creation) 62
Fig. 6.1 Artificial intelligence technologies (Source
www.accenture.com) 84
Fig. 6.2 Areas for application of artificial intelligence in healthcare
(Source www.PWC.com) 86
Fig. 6.3 Agri-commodity value chain in India (Source
www.niti.gov.in) 88
Fig. 6.4 Registered vehicles per 1000 population (Source
www.niti.gov.in) 91
Fig. 7.1 Block diagram representation of fake news detection
architecture (Source Author creation) 101
Fig. 7.2 Flow diagram of AI proctoring solution (Source Author
creation) 111
Fig. 7.3 Face detection YOLO algorithm (Source Author creation) 112
Fig. 7.4 Motion tracking of eyes and mouth (Source Author
creation) 112
Fig. 7.5 Face verification block diagram (Source Author creation) 118
Fig. 7.6 Sentiment analysis block diagram (Source Author creation) 119
Fig. 7.7 Classification analysis block diagram (Source Author
creation) 121
Fig. 7.8 ANN block diagram (Source Author creation) 122
Fig. 7.9 Decision tree block diagram (Source Author creation) 123
Fig. 7.10 Process diagram for loans & funding (Source Author
creation) 127
Fig. 7.11 Block diagram for loans & funding (Source Author
creation) 129
Fig. 7.12 Decision tree structure (Source Author creation) 131
Fig. 7.13 Sentiment analysis approach (Source Author creation) 135
Fig. 7.14 Sentiment classification (Source Author creation) 137
 List of Tables

Table 5.1 List of prominent global projects under Algorithmic

Government 80
Table 7.1 Dataset attributes considered for Prototyping 120
Table 7.2 Dataset attributes for the Prototyping 128

xxi
 CHAPTER 1

Role of Technology in Decision Making

Abstract The first chapter covers the background on the usage of tech-
nology for decision making. It presents the difficulties in the traditional
decision-making system and argues how technology helps to plug the
loopholes of the system. Also, the digitization of government services has
been discussed, where developing nations like India have been doing well
for the past few years. In many regions, authorities are adopting digital
services for office work and interaction with citizens. And this has led to
the rise in data generation at a massive level. Growing data leads to the
adoption of technology for decision making in the public sector, which
has been the whole premise for the usage of Artificial Intelligence in the
Government set up.

Keywords Artificial Intelligence · Public sector · Automated decision

making · Digitization · Government

1.1 Background
Technology is playing a significant role as a large number of tools are
present to strategize and design the decision-making process, especially
in the public sector. The Algorithmic Government is a technology-driven
government process that transforms data into actionable information and

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_1
2 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

helps decision-makers understand the current state and make a deci-

sion (Engin & Treleaven, 2019). Time tracking and activity tracking,
on the other hand, provides a way to collect data. Many public and
private companies use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning
(ML) algorithms as part of their decision-making process. AI improves
the quality of decision making, thereby makes the process work more
effective and efficient. AI and many other technologies like big data, the
Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, etc., have tremendous potential in
transforming the government, as shown in Fig. 1.1.
Figure 1.1 shows that Algorithmic Government is implemented
for the public sector automation like citizen services, supporting civil
servants, national public records, national physical infrastructure, statutes
and compliance, and public policy development. For automating these
services, open data portals using IoT, AI, big data, behavioral/predictive
analysis, and blockchain technologies are performing well worldwide to
create a successful Algorithmic Government (Engin & Treleaven, 2019).

Supporting National National

Public Statutes & Public Policy
Civil Public Physical
Services Compliance Development
Servants Records Infrastructure

1.Smart cities 1.Laws &

1.Interaction 1.Supporting 1.Forms & Statues 1.Monitoring
with citizens 2.Infrastructure public
civil servants submissions planning 2.Trials &
2.Online prosecution opinion
2.Case 2.Correspond 3.Transport
Service 3.Online 2.Policy
delivery management ences communication simulation
dispute

Government Data Facilities- public data portals, e.g. data.gov, data.gov.uk

Internet of Things (IoT)- sensors, devices, network connectivity
Artificial Intelligence (AI)- machine learning, deep learning, statistical modelling
Big Data Analytics- large, unstructured, heterogenous data, patterns, correlations
Behavioural/Predictive Analytics- behavioural psychology
Blockchain Technologies- distributed ledger, smart contracts

ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT

Fig. 1.1 Algorithmic government service architecture (Source Engin and

Treleaven [2019, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org])
 1 ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING 3

1.2 Traditional Decision Making

Traditional decision making has always been dependent on the paper-
based system. The paper-based system has many challenges that lead to
the system’s inefficiency, data loss, time loss, and more storage space
requirement as a considerable amount of data is generated. Figure 1.2
shows an example of a traditional decision-making model for purchase by
consumers (Xu & Chen, 2017).
Similarly, a lot of Government departments use paper-based decision
making. Like, the Immigration department plays an essential role in main-
taining the security of a country as they control the entry and departure of
people across the nations. These agencies have to approve a wide variety
of documents with applications ranging from identity cards, birth certifi-
cates, marriage registration, travel documents, and many others. Millions
of application forms of multiple types are submitted to the agency for
processing. In some countries like Hong Kong, agencies used a manual
immigration process (Chun, 2007), which has been digitized over the
years. The manual approach process starts with the applicant submitting
a hardcopy of the application form along with the photocopies of rele-
vant documents. The original records are verified at a later stage. The
Authorization Officer reviews the case and assigns a suitable Case Officer
who is familiar with handling that type of application. While considering
the evidence, the Case Officer may ask for additional documents from

Stimulus/ Information Evaluation Influence Influence

motives Source criterions factors factors

Problem Informative Evaluation of Purchase Post-purchase

Recognition Search alternatives Decision evaluation

Achieve purchasing
order

Fig. 1.2 Traditional decision-making model for purchase by a consumer (Source

Xu and Chen [2017])
4 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

the applicant for verification. When all the other papers are submitted
and verified, the Case Officer makes a final assessment reviewed by the
Authorization Officer. The entire process may require the applicant to
visit the agency several times. It may even take months to complete the
process as it depends on the complexity of the process. The Case Officer
plays a crucial role in applying their knowledge gained from the vast expe-
rience. Assessing a complex application can be very time-consuming and
knowledge-intensive. Thus, AI can be used to capture the different types
of knowledge required for the application assessment to make the process
easier and less time-consuming.
In South Africa, the community health workers (CHW) program is
organized under the Primary Health Care (PHCs) program (Neupane
et al., 2014). Community health workers play a significant role in
improving the health status of isolated communities. They provide
preventive health services, promote access to essential healthcare services
(Lewin et al., 2010), collect health-related data (Braun, Catalani,
Wimbush, & Israelski, 2013), monitors the community health, and also
acts as an interface between the community and the health system (Bhutta
et al., 2010). CHW programs have monitoring and evaluation (M&E),
supervision, and accountability, which serve as the key elements to ensure
the effectiveness of the program (Lehmann & Sanders, 2007). Tradi-
tionally, CHWs used a paper-based M&E system, which led to similar
problems like data loss, less storage space, inefficient filing system, lack of
supervision of record-keeping, time-consuming, and difficulty in tracing
the referrals made by the CHWs. The clients were also worried about
the confidentiality of the information captured in the process. After a
few years, mHealth was introduced to the use of mobile communica-
tion technology (Braun et al., 2013). This technology reduced many
of the challenges faced during the paper-based system. mHealth has
made the process very efficient and effective as through technology,
health promotion, education, and awareness can be created among the
people. However, only providing information through mobile or Internet
is not categorized under Algorithmic Government. Instead, it includes
digitization along with the decision-making powers within the machine.

1.3 Digitization of Government Services

Governments worldwide are increasingly using digitization and data
analytics in the policymaking process, which is consequently leading to
a more effective, efficient, and better quality of decision making. Humans
 1 ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING 5

generally rely on heuristics for day-to-day decision making, ignoring much

of the available information (Kolkman, 2020). Algorithmic models are
quantifying the policymaking. The range of quantification is vast, but
algorithmic models are of particular interest as they provide evidence in
decisions that allocate and save billion of government expenditure.
Figure 1.3 represents a policy-making cycle, an example of a heuristic
framework of policymaking (Kolkman, 2020). There is a substantial
increase in digital decision making across the central and local govern-
ments of various countries like the United Kingdom (UK). An investi-
gation by the Guardian showed 140 of 408 councils are using privately
developed algorithmic risk assessment tools to determine the eligibility
for benefits and entitlements (Jones, 2020). The Data Justice Lab in
2018 showed that 56 out of 96 local’s authorities and a quarter of police
authorities are using algorithms for prediction, risk assessment, and assis-
tance in decision making. Durham Police is using the Harm Assessment
Risk Tool (HART) to predict reoffending.
Indian citizens are also taking a digital leap, making it one of the largest
and fastest-growing space for government-citizen interactions. India had
560 million Internet subscribers in September 2018, second only to
China (Kaka, 2020). Indians download more than 12.3 billion mobile
applications in 2018, which is more than any country in the world except
China.
Figure 1.4 shows that India is among the top two countries globally
on many critical digital adoption dimensions. That is why the digitization
of government services has a vast scope in India. Developing coun-
tries like India are now emerging healthy destinations for implementing
technology-based solutions and helping the government make better and
efficient decisions.
Figure 1.5 shows that countries like South Korea and Sweden are
very high on the Digital Adoption Index score. Countries like Indonesia
and India are digitizing faster than the other countries by relatively high

Agenda Policy Policy Policy Policy

Setting Analysis Adoption Implementation Evaluation

Fig. 1.3 Policymaking cycle (Source Kolkman [2020])

6 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

1.2 Bn
people
enrolled for
unique
digital
idenƟty
294 Mn 12.3 Bn
users mobile apps
engaged in downloaded
Social Media in 2018

Rising
data in
India
1.17 Bn
354 Mn
wireless
smartphone
phone
devices
subscribers

560 Mn
internet
subscribers

Fig. 1.4 Increasing digital services in India (Source Kaka [2020])

margins. The digital adoption index covers three elements, which are
the digital foundation (cost, speed, reliability of Internet service), digital
reach (data consumption, app downloads), and digital value (how much
consumers engage online by chatting, tweeting, or shopping).
The public and private sectors are working very hard for the rapid digi-
tization of various countries worldwide. Again, in a country like India,
the Government’s national biometric digital identity program (Aadhar
Program) has played a significant role. It is considered to be the single
most extensive digital ID program in the world. Almost 870 million
bank accounts are linked to Aadhar in February 2018 compared to 399
million in April 2017 and 56 million in January 2014. Similarly, the
 1 ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING 7

South Korea 31
75
Sweden 27
73
United Kingdom 30
67
Singapore 24
67
United States 30
66
Australia 25
66
Canada 25
65
Russia 44
64
Japan 43
64
Germany 44
61
France 35
58
Italy 36
57
Brazil 30
50
China 45
47
Indonesia 99
40
South Africa 35
40
India 90
32
0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Percentage Growth from 2014 to 2017 Index Score in 2017

Fig. 1.5 Digital adoption index (Source Kaka [2020])

Goods and Services Tax (GST) network, initiated by the government in

2013, brought all transactions of 10.3 million indirect tax-paying busi-
nesses onto one digital platform (Kaka, 2020). At the same time, Reliance
Jio from the private sector is also helping by providing Internet-enabled
services to millions of consumers and made online usage more acces-
sible. So, in short, many countries are now in the digital transformation
stage, which is even evident by the E-Governance Development Index’s
progress by the United Nations. And digital transformations are making
the way ahead for the implementation of Algorithmic models for decision
making.
8 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

1.4 Data Generation

The introduction of computers, smartphones, and other digital devices
led to digital data generation (Kumar, Sood, Kaul, & Vasuja, 2020). Every
piece of information generated and exchanged between human to human,
machine to machine, and human to a machine, is treated as data. When
these systems are combined, they make enormous amounts of informa-
tion known as big data. Approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data get
generated each day with the current pace. Over the last two years, 90% of
data has been created globally (Marr, 2020). Twitter produced 1 Petabyte
(100 Terabyte) of data daily, while Google processed 100 Petabyte data
regularly, and YouTube added 72 h of video every minute (Ghotkar &
Rokde, 2016). And these numbers are increasing rapidly.
Based on such a fast data generation, three significant features charac-
terize big data, viz., Volume, Variety, and Velocity (Kumar et al., 2020).
Volume relates to the quantity or size of the data, which is enormous.
A substantial contributor to the ever-expanding digital universe is the
Internet of Things worldwide in all devices, creating data at every second.
Airplanes generate approximately 2.5 Terabytes of data each year from the
sensors installed in the engine. The velocity is the speed at which the data
is created, stored, analyzed, and visualized. In big data, the information
is generated in real-time applications. With the availability of Internet-
connected devices, wireless or wired, machines and devices can pass on
their data when created. At every minute, we upload 100 hours of video
on YouTube, around 20 million photos are viewed, and almost 2.5 million
queries are performed on Google (Ghotkar & Rokde, 2016).
The data generated by organizations is unstructured. Today data comes
in different formats like structured, semi-structured, and unstructured.
The wide variety of data needs other techniques and approaches to store
them. The diverse array of data, such as text, image, maps, network data,
geographical information, etc., needs appropriate treatment. Even a stan-
dard text posted on platforms like Facebook or Twitter can give different
insights, such as sentiment analysis on any concept.
Big data can be generated by humans, machines, or a combination of
human machine. The information generated may be stored in structured
or unstructured formats. Big data can be broadly categorized based on
sources such as machine-generated, human-generated, and organization-
generated. Machines are emerging as the largest source of big data.
Human-generated data refers to the vast amount of social media data
 1 ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING 9

like a status update, posting tweets, uploading photos or videos, etc.

Machine-generated data refers to data created from real-time sensors
through industry, machines, or vehicles. Data comes from various sensors,
cameras, satellites, log files, bioinformatics, healthcare tracker, and many
other sensor data sources. People generate a large amount of data on
social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and
YouTube. Large-scale data arises through blogging sites, email, mobile
text messages, and personal documents (Shelke, Abhang, & Shete, 2020).
The data generated through an organization is highly structured in
nature and trustworthy. This type of data is stored in a relational database.
Organizational information is private and is the smallest source in the
global big data scenario. The corporate data, when combined with public
domain data, provide meaningful insights to faster and better decisions.
Through AI, trillions of dollars in value can be added to goods and
services each year. AI could harness data about citizen’s behavior to
enable the government to work properly. Personalized public services
can be developed and adapted according to individual circumstances. It
also allows the government to make forecasts that are more accurate and
help them to plan and predict future trends. The healthcare sector can
also be inspected through this. The government can simulate complex
systems ranging from military operations to private areas of a country,
which will consequently enable the government to experiment with the
different policy options and will be able to spot the consequence before
committing to a measure (Araya, 2020).

1.5 Technology for Decision Making

Technology like Artificial Intelligence has different use cases ranging from
developing autonomous vehicles, conducting facial recognition, creating
chatbots, and conducting fraud detection. All of these applications of AI
have a commonality and fall in one or more seven patterns (Walch, 2020).
The seven patterns of AI are shown in Fig. 1.6 and are discussed below.
Hyper-personalization: Applying a machine-learning algorithm to
develop a profile of each individual and then having that profile learn and
adapt for a variety of purposes over time, e.g., recommend relevant prod-
ucts, displaying relevant content, and so on. It can be applied to different
sectors and industries like healthcare for personalized fitness and wellness
applications.
10 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Hyper-
personalizaƟ
on

PaƩerns &
RecogniƟon
Anomalies

7 PaƩerns
of AI
ConversaƟon
Autonomous
& Human
Systems
InteracƟon

PredicƟve
Goal-Driven
AnalyƟcs &
Systems
Decisions

Fig. 1.6 Seven patterns of Artificial Intelligence (Source Walch [2020])

Autonomous Systems: Autonomous systems are physical and virtual

software and hardware system which can accomplish a task or a goal with
minimal human interaction. The autonomous patterns require a machine
learning capability that can independently perceive the outside world,
predict future behavior, and plan how to deal with the changes. The
applications are autonomous machines and vehicles such as cars, trains,
airplanes, etc.
Predictive Analytics: The objective of predictive analysis is to help
humans make better decisions using machine learning and cognitive
approaches to understand the actual behavior and predict future outcomes
 1 ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING 11

based on these patterns. This pattern is used in the assisted search,

predicting behavior, optimization activities, giving advice, and intelligent
navigation.
Conversational Pattern: The objective of this pattern is to enable
machines to interact with humans; how humans interact with each other
through conversational forms of texts like voice, text, and image. The
application of this pattern is a chatbot, voice assistants, sentiment, mood,
and intent analysis.
Patterns and Anomalies: The goal of pattern and anomalies pattern
of AI is to use machine learning and cognitive approach to learn patterns
in the data and the connection between the data points to check the
existing model that it fits, or there is an outlier or anomaly. Fraud and
risk detection can be an application of this pattern of AI.
Recognition pattern: The objective of this pattern is to have machine
identify and understand things by using machine learning and deep
learning to identify and determine objects within image, audio, text,
etc. and improve the accuracy of the recognition-related tasks. Examples
include object recognition, facial recognition, text recognition, audio, and
video recognition.
Goal-driven system: Through reinforcement learning, the objective
is to find the optimal solution to a problem. This pattern is not widely
implemented, but it is gaining rapid adoption. Examples include game
playing, resource optimization, real-time auctions, etc.
Technologies like AI are now used for decision making, which
forms the basis for Algorithmic Decision Making for the Government.
Figure 1.7 shows how Algorithmic Decision Making is carried out. The
system is fed with historical data, and the machine generates the model.
This model is applied to the real-time data, and decision making takes
place by the engine. No human involvement is there throughout the
system, and the machine learns from every real-time input and fine-tunes
the model parameters after a set of iterations.
The International Transport Forum (ITF) at OECD is an intergovern-
mental organization covering all transport modes and currently working
on transport policies through which people’s lives can improve (ITF-
OECD, 2020). ITF is working on Algorithmic Governance in Transport
by automating the decision-making system. They found out that auto-
mated decision-making systems have a consequential impact on transport
activity. AI and machine learning algorithms helped to accomplish the
tasks which were previously difficult and time-consuming.
12 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Historical Data Data Feeding to the Model GeneraƟon by

CollecƟon system the Machine

Decision-making
Model applied on Machine learns from
happens based on
the user data in real new input and fine
the output of model
Ɵme tune the parameters
applied

Fig. 1.7 Algorithmic decision making process (Source Author’s Creation)

Beijing is saturated with sensors that can check the level of CO2 and
other pollutants in the atmosphere (Newcombe, 2020). The data gener-
ated from these sensors is enormous. Using AI, they combine the data
with historical data patterns of weather and predict the pollution level.
According to the result, they modestly dial back the industrial sector and
traffic rather than shutting down the entire city.

1.6 Artificial Intelligence for Public Sector

Artificial Intelligence is a tremendous technological revolution of our time
with the potential to disrupt all aspects of human existence. It enables the
machines to act with a higher intelligence level with human capabilities of
sense, comprehend, and work. Many countries worldwide are becoming
aware of the potential economic and social benefits of developing and
applying AI. Countries like China and the UK have estimated that 26%
and 10% of their GDPs will be sourced from AI-related activities, respec-
tively, by 2030 (Niti Aayog, 2020). Governments in countries like China,
France, and Japan are helping their people to spend on AI technology
development and adoption. They are setting up industrial and investment
funds in AI startups and connecting large corporations with startups, and
forming a national team.
Artificial Intelligence in a developing nation like India can also provide
significant value to a wide range of sectors and is the critical source of
competitive advantage for firms. AI in healthcare will remove the barriers
to access healthcare facilities in rural areas who suffer from a limited
 1 ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN DECISION MAKING 13

supply of healthcare professionals. Through the use of AI-driven diagnos-

tics, personalized treatments, imaging diagnostics, and early detection of
potential pandemics will help to make the healthcare sector more effec-
tive, efficient, and available for everyone. AI in Agriculture will address
the challenges such as lack of assured irrigation, overuse/misuse of pesti-
cides, and fertilizers and will also meet the increasing demand for food.
AI will improve the crop yield through real-time advisory, advanced
detection of pest attacks, and predicting crop prices to inform sowing
practices.
The potential use cases in smart mobility, including transports and
logistics, are ride-sharing, semi-autonomous features like driver assist,
predictive engine monitoring, and maintenance. It will also improve traffic
management and inventory management. Through the adoption of AI in
retail, there will be enhanced user experience by providing personalized
suggestions, preference-based browsing, an image-based product search,
and efficient delivery management.
Manufacturing is one of the biggest beneficiaries of AI-based solutions.
It enables them to be flexible and adaptable technical systems to automate
the process and respond to unexpected situations. Engineering, ware-
house, supply chain management, and maintenance will have an impact.
AI can also enable power storage in renewable energy systems through
intelligent grids enabled by smart meters and improve photovoltaic ener-
gy’s reliability and affordability. It will increase the efficiency in power
balancing, and it can be deployed for predictive maintenance of grid
infrastructure.
India’s government has started a program for AI under Niti Aayog
named #AIforALL, which aims to empower and enhance human capabil-
ities to address the challenges of effective AI implementation. Through
this strategy, there will be economic and social development of the
country. Similarly, many other countries have started to look at AI as a
potential source of decision making both at the public and private sector
levels. This way, Algorithmic Government is rising at the world level,
and a lot of countries, where either workload is very high, or there is
a shortage of workforce, the government can still operate smoothly.
14 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

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 CHAPTER 2

Background of Algorithmic Government

Abstract The second chapter discusses the core concepts of the Algo-
rithmic Government, various models associated with it, along with the
numerous advantages, disadvantages, challenges, limitations, concerns,
and audits related to it. The different types of Algorithmic Government
systems, classified based on the degree of automation and transparency
level, are also presented. Various ethical concerns like privacy, trans-
parency, discrimination, and accountability related to the implementation
of Algorithmic Government have been discussed, for which an audit
framework named SMACTR has been presented at the end. This chapter
also showcases the difference between Algorithmic Governance and Algo-
rithmic Government and how a separate governance structure will be
required to deal with Government by Algorithms.

Keywords Algorithmic ethics · Algorithmic bias · Algorithmic

limitations · Governance structure · Algorithmic audit · SMACTR

2.1 Concept of Algorithmic Government

Algorithms are defined as the set of rules that are being designed to
accomplish a particular task. These are step-wise procedures or solu-
tions created using mathematical logic to process instructions and data

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_2
18 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

to achieve the desired result (Aaij et al., 2017). Algorithms possess the
capability of completely replacing humans with their meta-functions. The
decisions undertaken by the government bodies are algorithmic as deci-
sions legislated by public governing bodies are an outcome of the exact
guidelines that process various inputs and deliver precise results based
on the auditable rules, i.e., laws and regulations. On the other hand,
governance is defined as establishing policies and continuous monitoring
of their proper application by the members of the governing body of
an organization (Danaher et al., 2017). More precisely, governance is
understood as a premeditated attempt to manage threats and opportuni-
ties to achieve a pre-determined goal (Black, De Carvalho, Khanna, Kim,
& Yurtoglu, 2014). It is not essentially goal-directed or intentional-like
regulation and comprises all sorts of social ordering independent of the
set of governing rules (Hofmann, Katzenbach, & Gollatz, 2017).
Rouvroy and Berns, for the first time in 2009, conceptualized the term
Algorithmic Government as a coordination contrivance different from the
concept of social governance. And Algorithmic Government is autho-
rizing software to undertake decisions independently without human
intervention or control only certain aspects of everyday social activi-
ties according to some algorithmically defined policies (Just & Latzer,
2017). The main benefit of using algorithms in governance is that it
becomes more powerful and prevalent. From the public authorities’
perspective, there are three constitutive parts of using an Algorithmic
Government framework; to regulate algorithmic systems to align it with
the public policy outcomes, carry out their regulatory tasks, and replace
traditional regulatory mechanisms. It is an emerging trend directed
toward automating the governance process (Morozov, 2014). Algo-
rithmic Government is chosen over algorithmic regulation because it
deliberately holds social ordering methodically and physically decentral-
ized and not state-centered. This concept’s emergence reflects an inter-
disciplinary connection between technical, natural, and social systems and
their corresponding controls (Wiener, 2019). Research works conducted
in this context focus on the social interactions and cross-examines the role
of algorithms and their collation effect in these specific contexts (Kitchin,
2017). Studies elaborate on how datasets and calculative procedures have
led to the emergence of new algorithmic systems to solve social prob-
lems and spot disputed content, divergent behavior, and preferences. The
Algorithmic Government intends to optimize the process of detecting
patterns in data and translate social context into computable methods for
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 19

maximizing the perceived organization benefits. The rapid advancements

in AI and related technologies have the potential to reduce the cost of
governing functions while simultaneously improving the decision-making
quality and unbridle the power of managerial data making government
performance more productive and proficient. The potential public areas
that can be automated include the following.

1. Public Services: The process of interacting and distributing services

to clients like answering queries, election processes, etc.
2. Supporting Civil Servants: Civil Servants can use intelligent tools
like Robo-advisors for providing advisory support.
3. National Public Records: Automating the public services can be
used for upkeeping the submissions and forms, messages, or citizen
records.
4. National Physical Infrastructure: Automation of the public service
sector can be used for maintaining the public infrastructure and
infrastructure planning
5. Statutes & Compliance: Public sector automation can assist in
upkeeping the laws & ordinances and managing the trials & prose-
cutions
6. Public Policy Development: Public sector automation can be used
for evolving public policies using Robo-advisors

But the government’s inability to properly manage this deployment can

lead to an unsolicited imperviousness in public decision making and
exaggerate concerns about illogical administration action and power.

2.2 Models of Algorithmic Government

Forms of Algorithmic Government
Different researchers have categorized Algorithmic Government into
various types depending upon their technology in use. Doug Laney of
Gartner in 2001 indicated the emergence of big data systems. Doug
Laney of Gartner suggested that big data was massive from three
different perspectives; volume, variety, and velocity (Kitchin & McArdle,
2016). Kitchen argues that there are seven diverse ways of measuring
bigness, viz., exhaustivity, extensionality and scalability, determination
and indexicality, relationality, and the three V’s (Kitchin, 2014). These
20 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

different ways of measuring the properties of big data help review

the numerous challenges and opportunities it poses in the design of
Algorithmic Government systems. The second part of the literature cate-
gorizes algorithms based on the search algorithms used; binary search,
quick sort, selection sort, merge sort, and insertion sort. It is critically
important to understand these different types of evaluating Algorithmic
Government systems’ normative and social properties. One of the most
recent changes is in the Algorithmic Government’s design from a top-
down algorithmic approach to a bottom-up algorithmic approach. In
the top-down approach, programmers define the set of rules, but in the
bottom-up approach, the algorithms develop its own learning rule set
in its counterpart. Moreover, the other part of the literature catego-
rized the Algorithmic Government based on the various stages in the
process of the Algorithmic Government; collection, processing, utiliza-
tion, and feedback & learning (Pasquale, 2017). These different stages
define how the information is acquired, processed, and analyzed in any
governing system (Zarsky, 2016). According to this classification of the
concept, Algorithmic Government is a loop that receives information,
processes it, and uses the processed data as a feed by learning from all
that it has already achieved or acquired (Zarsky, 2016). Thus, Algorithmic
Government operates as an intelligent system.
The different types of Algorithmic Government systems are classified
based on the degree of automation and transparency level, as shown in
Fig. 2.1. Transparency is one of the most vital elements representing
equality and self-determination. However, evaluating a particular type
of Algorithmic Government differs from each other due to the existing
difference in the supervisory bodies (Ananny & Crawford, 2017). More-
over, the degree of automation also matters a lot because governance’s
validity depends upon the responsibility and liability of the decision-
making body. The level of human involvement further distinguishes
between the two different types of Algorithmic Government systems.
There is no human intervention level in the fully automated systems,
whereas, in the recommender, humans approve or disapprove of a partic-
ular decision in the loop (Yeung, 2018). And the combination of all
the four types of governance systems generates the ideal form of Algo-
rithmic Government systems. The autonomous friendly systems are highly
transparent, whereas trust-based systems operate with a low level of trans-
parency. Furthermore, the licensed system is both transparent a well as
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 21

High Transparency

Autonomy-
Licensed
friendly
Systems
Systems
Recommender Automated
System ExecuƟon

Trust-based Out-of-Control
Systems Systems

Low Transparency

Fig. 2.1 Types of Algorithmic Government systems (Source Zarsky, 2016)

mechanized. And lastly, the out-of-control systems exhibit a low level of

transparency but the decisions implemented are fully mechanized.

Layered Model of Governance

Modularity is one of the ways used for managing complexity and reducing
interdependency between various modules. In layering, different parts of
the modules leading to the outcome are organized in layers parallel to
each other. The prominent layers are the social layer, the ethical layer, and
the technical layer for the AI governance model, as shown in Fig. 2.2.
The social and legal layer of the AI governance model is respon-
sible for creating rules and allocating responsibilities for regulating AI
and establishing the AI certification process. The ethical layer applies to
almost all types of AI systems. To ensure the proper functioning of the
governing system, IEEE has defined specific principles for AI and other
technical models. The algorithms are designed keeping in mind the prin-
ciples defined by IEEE. Lastly, the technical layer of the AI governance
model is the main foundation of the governing system (Gasser & Almeida,
2017).
22 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Society

• Norms
Social & Legal
• RegulaƟon
Timing
Layer
• LegislaƟon
Long-
term
• Criteria
Ethical Layer
• Principles
Mid-term
Technical Layer • Data Governance
- Algorithms • Algorithm Accountability Near-
and Data • Standards term

AI Systems
Fig. 2.2 Layered model for AI governance (Source Gasser & Almeida, 2017)

2.3 Advantages of Algorithmic Government

Artificial Intelligence technology has the ability to stimulate human-like
reasoning capabilities. Integrating AI into the governance system, giving
it Algorithmic capabilities, has the following benefits.

1. Using an Algorithmic Government system reduces the risk of human

errors. AI-based governing systems implement decisions on the
basis of the previously gathered information and particular data and
ruleset. These rules remain consistent throughout the loop, reduce
unnecessary mistakes and errors, and increase the level of precision
achieved.
2. Algorithmic Government system possesses the ability to handle and
manage risks like natural or human-made disasters.
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 23

3. The most significant advantage of using the Algorithmic Govern-

ment is its 24 × 7 availability. Automated machines can run
continuously, unlike humans.
4. Usage of AI in the governance system can help mechanize the repet-
itive mundane tasks for humans and increase creativity/efficiency.
5. Furthermore, the government can use AI applications for interacting
with users or external partners, which saves the need to hire human
professionals (customer care services).
6. Using AI and other related technologies are likely to improve the
decision-making process’s speed and implement quicker decisions.

Another part of the literature indicates other potential benefits of using

the Algorithmic Government, including speed, productivity, comprehen-
siveness, and equality (Domingos, 2015). Algorithmic Decision Systems
(ADS) provide several benefits from cost-cutting and increasing efficiency
and reliability. The results generated by the Algorithmic Government are
based on the patterns identified in the data collected and analyzed by the
government. It is almost challenging for humans to interpret such large
datasets. Moreover, the literature conducted in this context suggests that
Algorithmic Government can handle a high level of complexity because it
can accommodate a higher number of inputs.
Consequently, Algorithmic Government offers a new opportunity
for involvement, social comprehensiveness, and democratic receptiveness
(Schrape, 2019). Then, intelligent surveillance, biometric technologies,
and other big data tools used in the governance system can enhance secu-
rity and privacy issues. Cognitive systems can process a large amount of
information that human brains cannot handle (Dawes, 1979). Further-
more, Fildes, Goodwin, and Lawrence (2006) suggested that algorithmic
models’ results create better results than human minds taking into
account all the irregularities and analytics reasoning and judgments. The
accuracy of the forecasts predicted by algorithmic models is far better
and precise than the outcomes generated by human minds. Van Daalen,
Dresen, and Janssen (2002) argued that Algorithmic Government could
act as an eye-opener by bringing to notice one of the essential political
agendas and supporting the management of a particular target system.
Automated decision systems possess the ability to identify and recognize
the potential impact of different policy alternatives and implement the
one that is likely to affect positively. Zarsky (2016) suggested that algo-
rithmic decision support systems are potentially opaque (due to innate
24 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

complexity) and automated (limited human intervention). The data-

driven government tapped with digital databases linking different datasets
allows a much more flexible analysis improving the decision-making
process at every stage (O’Hara, 2020).

2.4 Disadvantages of Algorithmic Government

Alongside the numerous potential benefits of using algorithmic models,
there are several disadvantages as well. The proprietorship and stewardship
of data have progressively become a public concern. However, most of
the algorithms are written to enhance efficiency and productivity without
considering the societal impact of policy implementation. Then, secu-
rity and privacy concerns are always linked to technological solutions.
Furthermore, the lack of standards, scalability, storage, access, change
management, and security against cyber-criminals are concerns with Algo-
rithmic Government. There are numerous unplanned consequences of
using the technological framework for managing the governing system.

1. The most significant disadvantage of using an algorithmic decision-

making model is that it is a complicated procedure built using
millions of datasets and codes. The model can also automati-
cally change with passing the time, particularly when the machine
witnesses the new data. It is challenging for developers to explain
the process of implementing decisions. The operators control the
data fed into the systems, thereby making it difficult to justify the
appropriateness of the actual decision being implemented. The algo-
rithms designed based on the historical data might reflect historical
biases or shall be incomplete.

• Different modules of algorithms perform various tasks func-

tions, generating a unique outcome. Each module is easy
to manage when handled separately but becomes even more
complicated when combined.
• Iterative algorithms recurrently run a sequence of steps until
the algorithm unites to a constant outcome. A single pass
through these steps may provide insight into the process but
does not explain the final decision. The convergence criteria
may give insight into overall goals but may be independent of
individual outcomes.
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 25

2. Another aspect of the Algorithmic Government that poses a chal-

lenge is its capacity to implement many decisions. Here, in this
case, a flawed algorithmic system can cause potential harm, making
it difficult to respond adequately or efficiently, damaging the
governing system’s performance at a larger scale (New & Castro,
2018).
3. Then, the availability of data is also a significant concern in imple-
menting Algorithmic Government. The available dataset may not
be of exact standards or optimum quality. There are high chances
that the data fed into the system is inconsistent or obsolete, thereby
generating outdated policy imperatives.
4. Skill shortage is another concern. Many countries planning to use
Algorithmic Government do not have well-experienced or trained
staff to deploy and operate AI solutions making it difficult for faster
integration of AI into governance.
5. Cost is yet another major problem restricting the government from
integrating AI into its existing processes. Due to the complexity
involved, both implementation and ongoing maintenance are an
additional expense for the government.
6. Software programs require to be upgraded regularly to adjust to
the changing business needs and requirements. And several risks
associated with this may also change. Not only restoration wastes
a considerable amount of time, but there is also a risk of losing a
specific piece of information while altering the governance processes.
In this context, continuous learning poses a severe problem.
7. Polonetsky and Tene (2014) highlighted privacy and data protec-
tion issues related to surveillance systems that are functioning using
Algorithmic Government. Danaher (2016) emphasized problems
related to opacity and transparency algorithmic data. Apart from
this, several other researchers have highlighted concerns about the
inaccuracies, inadequacies, and unintended consequences of these
systems undermining the Algorithmic Government’s legality.

Zarsky (2016) classified problems related to the algorithmic decision-

making process into two broader categories, as shown in Fig. 2.3. They
26 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

PredicƟon
Problems
Eĸciency-Based
ObjecƟons
Bad Data Consumer to Firms

Algorithmic
Decision Making Unfair Wealth Between
Transfers Consumers

Fainess-based Arbitrariness Away from

ObjecƟons Problem protected groups

Autonomy-based
Harms

Fig. 2.3 Zarsky’s classification of protestations to Algorithmic Government

(Source Zarsky [2016])

are efficiency-based objections and fairness-based objections. Efficiency-

based objections argue that the decisions implemented might be incor-
rect, and fairness-based objections suggest that the decisions implemented
might mistreat people.

2.5 Limitations with Algorithmic Government

Some of the significant limitations with the Algorithmic Government are
as follows.

1. Humanity and human agency are lost: With the emergence of

logic-driven society, humans, rational beings are being ignored and
avoided, passing away the decision-making process to the robots.
The automation of the human system for improving efficiencies and
productivity can lead to the dehumanization of humans. Thus, the
system may see decreased human involvement.
2. Furthermore, algorithms written using mathematical procedures are
insufficient to apprehend the richness of people’s lives and the diver-
sity of their understandings and know-hows. Owing to algorithms’
very nature, it will reflect the biased thinking of people leading
to results that are more effective and efficient but will lack the
appropriateness, correctness, and fairness.
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 27

3. Restricted Work: AI machines work on programming. These

machines can only be programmed to undertake specific categories
of work. Thus, relying on computers to completely replace or alter
the governance system is not possible.
4. Software Malfunction: Code-driven decision-making body relies on
machines and algorithms, which can also breakdown. Automating
the decision-making process will make it even more confusing to
identify the main reason behind the malfunction.
5. Commercial and Public Interests: The conflicting goals of private
and public entities make it difficult for the developer to formu-
late policies that align with the needs and expectations of the two
governing authorities.
6. Technological uncertainty: This was considered another barrier to
the effective implementation of the Algorithmic Government. Both
the government officials and the developers lack clarity regarding
algorithm development (Danaher et al., 2017) and the technologies
which would be useful, scalable, and efficient.

2.6 Practical Concerns

with Algorithmic Government
The literature about Algorithmic Government shows that AI changes
the perspective of society and its people. AI increased the amount of
data collected by the government for its analysis, or detailed surveillance
helps quantify the relevance of different policy implementations (Rieder
& Simon, 2016). The datafication process offers social sorting oppor-
tunities and poses threats to human rights like privacy, the fairness of
speech, etc. Furthermore, Algorithmic Government has led to an effect
on the human agents, making it challenging to establish connotations
between humans and machines. Kemper and Kolkman (2019) argues that
it is practically impossible or infeasible to achieve absolute fairness and
transparency in computer codes. Another critical concern is that of algo-
rithmic bias. Automated decision making by algorithmic systems routinely
favors people and collectives that are already privileged while discrimi-
nating against marginalized people (Noble, 2018). While this constitutes
a significant concern to tackle the increasing automation of humans’ life,
biased datasets and decision rules also create discrimination. Yet, there is
28 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

a need to implement a governance system driven by datasets for coun-

tries to stay ahead in the digital competition and change how the state
is operated. However, it is impossible to implement effective and precise
policy decisions without collecting an adequate amount of non-personal
information. The government should design their unique & customized
algorithm structures rather than relying on private contractors to elim-
inate the conflicting roles or public and private governing bodies and
formulate unique algorithms dedicated to shared goals and missions.
The involvement of the private sector has worn out transparency and
responsibility.

2.7 Ethics with Algorithmic Government

Despite the increasing adoption of an Algorithmic decision-making
model, the government cannot address several ethical concerns. The legal
and ethical criteria are not suitable enough to handle the ethical consid-
erations of the automated systems. This can further lead to the potential
misuse of an essential piece of information. The four major ethical issues
concerning the usage of Algorithmic Government systems are as follows.

1. Privacy: The users of the AI machines face an extensive threat to

privacy. The data collected by the automated machines for future
policy implementation or government applications tracking online
user activities is an invasion of the user’s personal space.
2. Lack of Transparency: AI-based governing models are so much
complex that even the developers fail to explain their functioning.
This makes it difficult to trust the validity of the outcomes and the
results. The policies are implemented based on the data fed into
the system and the complex processing of algorithms. Hence, it is
difficult to confirm the validity of the policies implemented.
3. Bias and discrimination: Real-world biasness or creators can alter
the algorithms according to their preferences and viewpoints.
4. Lack of governance and accountability: This is one of the crit-
ical issues with AI governing systems and models. It becomes
challenging to identify who should be held responsible for some
misconduct or wrong implementation of an algorithm. There is no
one specific governing authority who takes accountability for the
storage and the dataset (Kraemer, van Overveld, & Peterson, 2011).
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 29

To address the ethical issues with Algorithmic Government, the govern-

ment needs to establish an algorithmic risk management process to
manage the associated technical, social, and legal risks. Additionally, the
government should create explainable AI-based algorithms to improve
the level of transparency and increase the level of trust in the decisions
implemented using Algorithmic Government processes. The government
must then establish procedures or use cases in conjugation with sugges-
tions from both external and internal parties. The designed algorithms
must include all the relevant designs in the applications. Moreover, the
designers must develop datasets and algorithms in accordance with data
ethics and AI ethics, respectively (GovtTech, 2020).

2.8 Audits and Regulations

with Algorithmic Government
With increased access to AI tools and related technologies, accountability
is done to assess and review the potential impacts and behavioral responses
toward these technological systems. Due to algorithms’ very nature, the
person or the governing authority designing the algorithms are held
responsible. AI system is reliable only when the implemented technical
system meets the quality assurance pipeline’s principles. However, a sepa-
rate governance structure is required to keep a check on whether the
system meets the declared ethical expectations or not. Audits are tools
that are being used to check whether or not algorithms are designed to
comply with industry standards and regulations (Raji et al., 2020).
SMACTR (Scoping, Mapping, Artifact Collection, Testing, and Reflec-
tion) is a formal audit framework used to check whether Algorithmic
Government complies with the set ethical principles or not (Raji et al.,
2020). The gray area in Fig. 2.4 indicates a process, and colored areas
reflect the documents which are being checked. Orange materials are
reports generated by the audit teams, and blue records are produced
by production teams, whereas the green ones are developed by both the
teams together.

• The Scoping Stage: This stage clarifies the objective of the audit
procedure. Here, risk analysis is done to propose suitable changes in
the development process. This stage’s output is a product require-
ment document explaining how the algorithms should be designed
30 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Scoping Mapping Artifact Collection Testing Reflection Post-Audit

Define Audit Stakeholder Review Remediation Go / No-Go

Audit Checklist
Scope Buy-in Documentatio Plan Decisions

Product Conduct Adversarial Design Design

Requirements Interviews Model Cards Testing History File Mitigations
Document (ADHF)

AI Principles Stakeholder Ethical Risk Analysis Chart Track

Datasheets
Map Implementatio

Use Case Interview Summary

Ethics Review Transcripts Reports

Social Impact Failure Models and effects analysis (FMEA)

Assessment

Fig. 2.4 Audit framework (Source Raji et al. [2020])

to implement the right governing decisions. This articraft developed

at this stage is an ethical review of the system use cases and social
impact assessment.
• Mapping Stage: At this stage, the perspectives of different internal
teams involved in the audited system are considered. Here, the needs
of the internal stakeholders and collaborators are fed into the system
for its execution. This stage primarily produces a stakeholder map,
a collaborator contact list, a system map for product development,
and multiple models.
• Articraft Collection Stage: This stage identifies and collects the
required documentation to prioritize areas that need to be tested.
The audit-check list is generated at this stage to initiate the audit
process. This stage ensures that full documentation is completed
before the actual audit process commences. Furthermore, data-
sheets and model cards are also prepared at this stage, which is
essential for developing the Algorithmic Government model.
• Testing Stage: At this stage, the algorithms generated are tested
as use cases to gauge the system’s accuracy. Auditors review the
document collection and assess system failures’ likelihood to check
whether the plan complies with declared principles. Adversarial
testing is done at this stage to find possible vulnerabilities, both pre-
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 31

and post-launch of the technology, for instance, any specific security

or privacy concerns that are likely to emerge.
• Reflection Stage: The audit phase results are further analyzed at
this stage compared to the ethical prospects explained at the scoping
stage. A mitigation or action plan is developed at this stage, encap-
sulating the probable risks and test failures for the design team to
identify areas for future developments.

2.9 Governance Structure

for Algorithmic Government
Government and Governance
Both Government and Governance are irreplaceable terms. Governance
is not the same as the Government, even though the Government can
still be a subset or a constituent element of the governance process.
The governance concept corresponds to a multi-stakeholder approach
that focuses on one particular theme, territory, or practice. The gover-
nance process provides a more holistic view of an organization or a
society that directs itself. It is more precisely understood as a set of
rules and laws formed by the Government and implemented through
state representatives. In simpler words, governance is everything that the
Government does (Peters & Pierre, 1998). The governance body works
toward achieving good results by following a set pattern of rules. In
contrast to the traditional public power pattern in which authority is
granted the control to plan and implement decisions, governance mecha-
nisms operate on the command and control model. Unlike in the context
of the Government, wherein the Prime Minister controls and regulates
other ministers, which further dominates civil servants and local govern-
ment officials (Richards and Smith 2004), the governance mechanism
cannot bring about the desired changes as the power is dispersed among
different administrations. On the other hand, the term Government is
used for governing while the Government is an office or the authority of
governing. It is a body of elected members that is headed and controlled
by a single leader. These people are responsible for implementing poli-
cies and regulations for maintaining law and order in the country and
resolve grievances that emerge. The governing body comprises of both
temporary as well as permanent members. The bureaucracy that runs and
32 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

works in different ministries and government departments in the back-

ground is permanent. On the other hand, the Council of Ministers is
elected by the people and serves for a fixed period. They can be replaced
after their term as their position is temporary. Among a narrower set of
participants, the Government describes a stricter and more limited set of
activities (Meehan, 2003). Governments have a range of tools at their
disposal, but they tend to concentrate only on a couple of familiar ones
that demand their direct involvement.

Algorithmic Government and Algorithmic Governance

To address the challenges imposed by continually evolving technologies
and keeping pace with the competitive environment, governing bodies
are always looking out ways to explore and utilize technologies to shape
and guide society’s behavior and governance. Moreover, the growth and
spread of AI-related technologies have created immense pressure on the
Government to use AI and associated best practices to envoy decision-
making processes to computers. Governance is a term that has been
deployed to define coordination between actors based on rules. It is
neither intentional nor goal-directed (Katzenbach & Ulbricht, 2019).
Instead, it requires unintentional collaboration (Hofmann et al., 2017).
However, governance excludes all modes of social ordering that are solely
occasional and do not depend on any rule; governance implies a minimum
degree of stability required to create perceptions by actors that are a
precondition for cooperation (Hobbes, 2001).
On the other hand, Algorithmic Governance is a term used to present
an idea that highlights the fact that governing administrations use algo-
rithms and inter-connected mathematical models to undertake complex
decisions using computing capabilities. Compared to the governance
mechanism, which is being controlled and managed by the traditional
manual form of administration structure, a mathematical computational-
based algorithmic model is more powerful and pervasive and consequently
becomes more comprehensive, receptive, and allows for more social
diversity (Danaher et al., 2017). Among all the proposed benefits of
algorithmic governance systems, including speed, effectiveness, extensive-
ness, and fairness, algorithmic systems can reinforce social, ethical, legal
problems (Domingos, 2015).
 2 BACKGROUND OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 33

Separate Governance Structure

Both public and private sectors are increasingly adopting Algorithmic
systems for effectively implementing decisions at various levels with poten-
tially visible consequences for individuals, societies, and individuals. There
is an emergent need to have an appropriate governance mechanism to
ensure that the risks and benefits are equally distributed to generate
positive and influential outcomes for society. Unless proper governance
mechanisms are effectively put in place, there are higher chances that
algorithmic systems’ opacity could lead to circumstances where people
are negatively affected. As with the governance of another aspect of
society, Algorithmic accountability is essential for confirming fruitful
results for different social sectors. Transparency of algorithmic governance
system corresponds to the legitimacy of its data, goal, outcome, compli-
ance, influence, or the automated decision-making systems. However,
maintaining transparency is extremely crucial for ensuring accountability.
Principles vs. rule-based approaches are the two available fundamental
approaches to governance. The rule-based governance system provides
certainty to the governance system, whereas the principle-based act as a
guideline that offers flexibility, enabling the regulatory regime to have
some durability in the rapidly changing complex business environment.
However, most regulatory systems operate by using an appropriate mix
of principles and rules. Rules are clearly defined boundaries indicating the
governance mechanism’s scope, whereas principles are universal guidelines
provided to enhance the regulatory regime’s overall competitiveness. The
emerging problem of applying current regulatory structures to processes
is a lack of clarification on modern algorithmic components that have
changed significantly. The system’s degree of effect on people when a
product integrates algorithmic behavior cannot be determined. Vacuum
cleaners, for example, have historically been recognized as posing such
health hazards by electrocution and potential dispersion of fine matter
particles, all of which are checked as part of the CE certification that
before being sold inside the EEA, the vacuum cleaner must pass. By
incorporating autonomous navigation, camera image processing, and
communication algorithms, i.e., turning it into a robot vacuum, how
‘upgrading’ a vacuum cleaner product line alters the potential for the
product’s negative impact. There are parallels between the regulatory
problems posed by the use of algorithmic decision making as part of
goods or services and the effect of switching to the provision of online
34 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

digital services. To uphold the ‘online and offline equivalence’ concept

for legal and moral rights/responsibilities, an urgent need for revising the
existing legislation, rules, and international agreements has been observed
in the digital environment. Similar updates may be needed to ensure a
level playing field, where algorithmic services that do or do not inte-
grate upholding decisions using algorithmic models to be equally liable
for effects that discriminate, limit and weaken freedom and destabilize
the moral rights of the consumers (Koene, Clifton, Hatada, Webb, &
Richardson, 2019).

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 CHAPTER 3

Techniques and Technologies

Abstract This chapter presents the various technologies which are used
for implementing Government by Algorithms. They are Artificial Intel-
ligence, machine learning, deep learning, blockchain, augmented reality,
virtual reality, big data, cloud computing, data lakes, Digital Twin, edge
computing, granular computing, and Fog of Things. There are different
aspects like data handling, data storage, data processing, service mapping,
security, computations, and advancements required to successfully imple-
ment automated decision making through Algorithmic Government.
Other emerging areas in technology will also be beneficial for the
Government to adopt automated systems.

Keywords Artificial Intelligence · Machine learning · Deep learning ·

Blockchain · Big data · Cloud computing · Data lakes · Digital Twin ·
Edge computing

3.1 Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence refers to machines’ ability to replicate human func-
tions, the ability to learn and solve problems. In computer science, we
call them ‘Intelligent bots.’ The goal of AI is to tackle complex issues, in
a similar way humans do, through different tasks as shown in Fig. 3.1.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 37

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_3
38 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Experiental
Learning

Handle
Learning based
situaƟon with
reasoning
no data

ArƟficial
Intelligence
Creates Image
PerspecƟves System RecogniƟon

Diīerent Complex
Language System
Understanding SoluƟon

Fig. 3.1 What does an artificial intelligence system must do (Source Author
Creation)

Today there are three spectrum levels in AI. Assisted Intelligence, which
refers to the automation of primary tasks like assembly lines machines.
Augmented Intelligence, where AI learns from human input and can
make more accurate decisions based on information. Autonomous Intel-
ligence refers to intelligence where there is no human interaction like that
for the self-driven cars (Chen, 2009).
AI is a combination of Algorithmic Decision Making (ADM) and big
data. Big data refers to a massive amount of unstructured data from
various sources. The term big data gained popularity in the 2010s. An
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 39

THEN AcƟon
IF THEN AcƟon
ELSE IF
ELSE AcƟon

Fig. 3.2 Set of rules in the form of a decision tree (Source Author Creation)

Machines

BIG DATA AI DECISIONS

Fig. 3.3 Decision-making model using AI (Source Author Creation)

algorithm is a set of rules or instructions to solve a problem. ADM means

the result of algorithms is put into action without the human loop. As
shown in Fig. 3.2, a simple algorithm displays the set of rules in the form
of a decision tree.
In today’s world, connected devices capture an incredible amount of
data. It may be money transactions, gestures, likings, dislikings, and much
more. All this information is used to make better decisions. A decision-
making model that used data is shown in Fig. 3.3, where AI is used
to create a business decision based on the user’s data collected from
connected devices.
Artificial Intelligence can provide considerable incremental value to
various sectors (Kuziemski & Misuraca, 2020), especially in a developing
country like India. It will be a crucial source of competitive advantage.
Some common uses of AI are as follows.
AI in manufacturing: The Volvo industry is making fair use of AI
and IoT devices to maintain passengers’ safety. In 2015, the automa-
tion industry fitted sensors to 1000 vehicles to gather their data in a
hazardous condition. The collected data predicts the early warning signs
and prevents accidents, failure in cars, and passengers’ safety.
AI in financial services: In financial services, there is always a risk
of accepting fraudulent applications and enduring losses. To decrease
such fraud, many departments and institutions analyze the data from
credit bureau data sources, which allows accessing the credit risk assess-
ment of an individual consumer where the system uses advanced pattern
recognition to find good and bad loan applications.
40 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

AI in healthcare: The application of Artificial Intelligence can help

address health issues in rural areas. It can be achieved through the early
identification of potential pandemics, image diagnostics, and AI-driven
personalized treatment.
AI in education: The Potential use of AI is in enhancing the learning
experience of individuals by personalized training and skilling, reducing
the dropouts, enhancing classroom studies.
AI in smart cities: With the rise in the urban population, smart cities
are a new concept. To enhance the quality of life, AI can help to meet the
demands. In traffic management, to reduce congestions, provide more
security and threat alerts systems are potential use cases of AI in smart
cities (Yigitcanlar, Desouza, Butler, & Roozkhosh, 2020).
The Indian Government has launched the National Artificial Intelli-
gence portal, which is managed by National Association of Software and
Service Companies (Nasscom) and backend by e-Governance division of
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), with an
objective of one platform for AI advancement in India (https://indiaa
i.in/). The portal provides information on the entire ecosystem of AI and
serves as a platform for AI resources. Similarly, many countries are now
adopting AI in various sectors for decision making by the Government.

3.2 Machine Learning & Deep Learning

Machine learning is a process in which the computer is capable of
learning by themselves (Alpaydin, 2020). It is part of an emerging artifi-
cial intelligence technology over the past years, which automates complex
problems. Machine learning models are broadly divided into supervised
and unsupervised learning. In a nutshell, identifying the patterns in
training data and estimating the correct outcomes in newly input data
is covered under machine learning. In the government sphere, super-
vised learning is most relevant. In supervised learning, the task is to learn
from specific examples and predict future events. Supervised learning has
classification and regression techniques. In unsupervised learning, the
information which is used for modeling comprises unstructured data.
The system doesn’t figure out the right output, but it explores the data
and can draw inferences from datasets to describe hidden structures from
unstructured data. Unsupervised learning includes various clustering tech-
niques. Figure 3.4 shows the workflow of the machine learning modeling
process.
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 41

TRAINING

TRAINING FAILURE TRAIN MODEL EVALUATE

DATA EXTRACTION MODEL MODEL

PREDICTION

NEW DATA PREDICT LABELS

Fig. 3.4 Machine learning modeling process (Source Author Creation)

Deep learning is a class of machine learning that is concerned with

algorithms inspired by the human brain’s function, also called an arti-
ficial neural network. It helps to make the decision more accurate and
insightful. In deep learning, the computer model learns from the text,
images, videos, and audios, which helps achieve high accuracy. These
models are trained using large datasets and neural network layers. The
term ‘deep’ in deep learning refers to hidden layers that help to achieve
high accuracy.
It is a sub-component of AI function that tries to mimic a human
brain’s procedure for processing the information it receives, recog-
nizing speech patterns, and ultimately making final decisions. It can
do all this without the need for humans to supervise or control them.
Before the launch of this concept, AI-computation capabilities were
restricted to processing natural data that too in the raw form. However,
deep learning approaches are representation-based learning methods with
multiple representation levels obtained by writing non-linear but straight-
forward modules (LeCun, Bengio, & Hinton, 2015). Deep learning is an
advanced computational technique of AI capable of recognizing intricate
structures in the high-dimensional data fed into the system. The degree of
deep learning’s opacity depends upon the number of deep learning layers
and connections among the layers. If the layer’s level of contact is small,
the deep learning technology is more easily interpretable and vice-versa
(Knight, 2017). Its architecture is a multi-layer stack of simple modules,
all or most of which are subject to learning. Each of the stack modules
transforms the input to maximize both selectivity and the inconsistency
of the representation. For several non-linear layers, say with a depth of
42 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

5 to 20, the device can perform too complex input functions that are
simultaneously sensitive to the minute information.
Moreover, deep learning techniques are beyond the control of humans.
Coglianese and Lehr (2016) argue that human experts retain very
substantive and limited control over the situation. It is an optimization
process of the algorithm and a trial-and-error approach in which the algo-
rithm is directed and nudged by humans (Kim, 2020). Deep learning
is used for various use cases in multiple industries. In the automation
industry, companies are using them to detect the traffic signs and traffic
lights, which helps the self-driving vehicles to recognize the signs and
respond according to it automatically. In industries with the help of
deep learning, we can detect the person and help to warn if they are
unsafe, which will help avoid accidents and increase safety measures. Both
machine learning and Deep Learning are prominently used for solving
complex decision-making problems around the world.

3.3 Blockchain
Blockchain refers to a digital ledger where blocks store the information of
transactions or a list of records linked using cryptography and maintained
across several computers connected in a peer-to-peer network (Deloitte,
2018). The block contains the hash of the previous block, transaction
details, and timestamp. The blocks are made up of digital pieces that
store information. The blocks hold the transition details like time, date,
amount, who participates in the transactions, and name, distinguishing
them from others just like out names. The blockchain executes opera-
tion quicker and enhanced customer experience and ensure transparency
to the customer. There are three types of blockchains public, private,
and permissioned blockchain. Public blockchain means a fully transparent
transaction based on a decentralized architecture, where anyone can read
and participate. No one has control over that network. Private blockchain
is centralized, and only permitted entities can join the network. In a
private blockchain, the write permission is only given to trusted enti-
ties, and the read permission is given to all the participants. Permission
blockchain provides read and write permission to only a few restricted
entities (Zyskind & Nathan, 2015).
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize interactions
between governments, businesses, and citizens (Cerf, Matz, & Berg,
2020). In 2008, a technical paper was released, which described the new
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 43

electronic cash system called ‘Bitcoin.’ The report proposed that we intro-
duce the transaction cryptographically, where the participants will be able
to execute a transaction without the need for a trusted third party. And
it became a reality in the next few years. A report by the Committee
on Payments and Market Infrastructure set up by Bank for International
Settlements (BIS) characterized this technology as:

• Electronic means they are easy to use and easily accessible.

• Not liable to anyone means they do not require third party trust
between transactions.
• Peer-to-peer exchange means it is a decentralized structure.

In India, blockchain saw an early adoption in 2016 by the banks and

financial institutions, but India has also seen blockchain adoption in
the government sectors. As per the reports, NITI Aayog is working to
make the country’s largest blockchain network, speed up contract trans-
actions, reduce fraud, and increase transparency. Land registration and
records used blockchain technology exhaustively around the world. As
we know, the land is the costliest asset and epic center of land fights and
frauds. In the absence of an efficient system of records maintenance, the
Government has made multiple attempts to digitalize it. The land regis-
tration process is costly and time-consuming because it involves manual
paper-work, verification, and authentications from various bodies. The
blockchain technology will bring a sound and robust solution to digitize
the entire registration process where all the stakeholders will be present
at a single platform.
Figure 3.5 depicts the solution of land registration using blockchain
technology. A prototype was developed and showcased. Necessary stake-
holders were brought on board, citizens to manage their land transfer
(including uploading essential documents, payments) through a single
user-friendly portal and viewing their transaction’s current status. In the
future, blockchain technology will be heavily used in implementing Algo-
rithmic Governance and Decision Making (Batubara, Ubacht, & Janssen,
2018; Hyvärinen, Risius, & Friis, 2017).
44 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Registrar Oĸce:
RegistraƟon
Revenue
Tehsildaar
Department:
Oĸce: Land
Payment of
Measurement
Fees, MutaƟon

Seller: Title
Ownership
Block Buyer: Title
Transfer

Chain
Surveyors: Plan Court/Notaries:
of Land Property Deeds
Government IT
Department:
PAN, Aadhar
Card
VerificaƟon

Fig. 3.5 Blockchain-based process flow (Source Deloitte, 2018)

3.4 Augmented Reality &

Virtual Reality (AR & VR)
Earlier AR & VR only existed in science fiction. But in the twenty-first
century, augmented reality and virtual reality have gained a lot much
attention (Briggs, Dul, Dobner, Mariani, & Kishnani, 2018). They are
regarded as world-changing technologies. Augmented reality is a blend of
the digital world and physical elements to create an artificial environment.
AR has characteristics like synchronized real and virtual objects running
in real-time 3D. In recent years, the scope of AR has expanded in fields of
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 45

research, science, medicine, and education. AR toolkit is an open-source

available for the creation of AR applications. Virtual reality projects the
image into a whole new environment with a headset user can experience
the entire new 360-degree environment around him. AR and VR have
various applications in different industries. A few of them are listed down.
Gaming & Entertainment: In 2016, an application called Pokémon
Go created a storm in the world, which was an AR-based game. The
player had to collect coins by walking around in the real world while
holding their smartphones. With the help of a camera, they can catch
virtual Pokémon’s. It has 65 million players by April 2017.
Social Media: Snapchat jumped to AR/VR technology early to provide
its user-interactive photo filters. Recently, they have started releasing
wearable shoppable, where the users can try different brand products.
Education: With the VR technology, there will be a significant change
in the teaching style, learning from printed books to simulation study.
Instead of reading the boring history from the books, VR technology can
change the whole concept where students can participate in the event
and interact also. Google Expeditions Pioneer Program, Alchemy VR,
Discovery VR, and EON Reality are major contributors to the education
field.
Travel & Tourism: AR has the potential to redefine travel and tourism
(Nayyar, Mahapatra, Le, & Suseendran, 2018). The innovative use of AR
is increasing day by day in travel app development, and it is growing
continuously. AR offers services as a 360 tour of the hotel room, lobby,
and bathroom, which will provide the information in a more interactive
way than 2D pictures. With the AR-based app development, governments
can enhance their infrastructure by providing more interactive methods to
explore historical places. Especially in India, with so many historical sites
all around the country, it will be the best opportunity for the government
to increase the tourist attraction with the use of emerging technologies
like AR/VR.
There are currently many AR applications available like Google sky
map, Spot crime, Ray-Ban virtual mirror, and Nokia Lumia. Many compa-
nies are now working on advanced wearable technology platforms, which
will enhance the AR/VR utility. And this can certainly be tapped by the
Government Sector for strengthening the decision making. Evidence1 has

1 Deloitte—https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/public-sector/aug
mented-virtual-reality-government-services.html.
46 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

now been found where Governments are considering the usage of AR and
VR in their decision-making process (Doolin, Holden, & Zinsou, 2013;
Eggers, Schatsky, & Viechnicki, 2017; Yusuf et al., 2020).

3.5 Big Data

Big data can be defined in several ways as per various researchers (Jeble,
Kumari, & Patil, 2017; Kim, Choi, & Byun, 2019; Munné, 2016;
Shamim, Zeng, Shariq, & Khan, 2019) with potential applications in
Government sector. Big data has a massive volume of structured and
unstructured data, which is established as the ocean of information. Big
data is large unstructured dataset which is gathered and require new tech-
nology to process them. Only data volumes are not relevant in big data,
but also what different organizations do with that data matter’s the most.
Every day we create around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and with the
help of this, we can predict the amount in upcoming years. Approximately
90% of the data generated is unstructured or raw data, but it offers consid-
erable value and creation and discovery opportunities. In the early 2000s,
big data’s mainstream definition is defined into 3 V’s—volume, velocity,
and variety, but after further refinement, it now has 5 V’s—volume,
velocity, variety, veracity, and value. Volume means a large amount of data
in terabytes or petabytes. Velocity represents the rate of data accumulation
is increasing day by day at a quick pace. Variety means multiple sources of
data sources like enterprise systems, social media, text, video, audio, email,
and other digital devices. Veracity means the quality of data is essential for
the accuracy of the decision. And Value means an outcome that can be
inferred from heterogeneous data. There are different sources from where
the big data originates, such as transactional data, social media data, elec-
tronic items, and Internet applications. Big data analytics is a tool used
for decision making. It has made it easier to analyze the data. Analytics is
used in making decisions in e-commerce, E-Government, health, security,
and public safety through database segmentation, graph mining, social
network analysis, text analytics, and web analytics.
The growing use of big data analytics has built pressure on govern-
ments to adopt new technologies to transform all data into actionable
information to provide citizens with valuable services. Big data analytics
help in the effective decision-making process by understanding the data
patterns and their relationship. Figure 3.6 shows the framework of big
data and decision making.
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 47

Develop Data Data

data Analytics Decisions
Mining Analysis
source

Fig. 3.6 Conceptual framework of big data and decision making (Source Author
Creation)

Big data analytics will help survey the needs of the country’s people and
enable the government to provide them with what they want. More data
about citizens will help find the citizens’ interests and likings and iden-
tify their weaknesses, which were not possible earlier. The data generated
through other government applications will also help train the models
and apply the intelligence for automated decision making.

3.6 Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is defined as the delivery of computing services,
including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and
intelligence over the Internet. It is a new way of delivering IT resource
services. Cloud computing is a shift in business thinking in IT resources.
It is very beneficial for the organization to shift to cloud infrastructure
(Martens & Teuteberg, 2012). Some factors are listed below.
Cost: Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hard-
ware and software and setting up or running on-site datacenters. The
flexible pricing model of clouds allows for just paying the number of
resources that you have used.
Broad network access: The cloud can be accessed from anywhere
worldwide as it just requires Internet connectivity.
Unlimited Storage: Storing information in the cloud gives almost
unlimited storage capacity.
Performance: Cloud computing provides services worldwide and has
data centers which are updated regularly to fast and efficient computing
infrastructure.
Reliability: It provides data backups and recovery if any mishap
happens. The data can be mirrored at different redundant sites on the
cloud provider’s network.
Cloud computing is divided into four deployment models. The public
cloud is owned and operated by third party providers and provides
48 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

services like servers and storage over the Internet, for example—Microsoft
Azure. The private cloud, where all the resources are held and managed
by a single organization. A private cloud is one in which the services and
infrastructure are maintained on a private network. The hybrid cloud is
a mix of both private and public clouds. This type of cloud provides
greater flexibility, more deployment options, and security. The commu-
nity cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is shared by several organizations
and supports specific concerns.
The cloud architecture can be categorized as Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).
Due to cloud computing advantages, governments have launched many
E-Governances services on cloud technology in many countries (Jun &
Jun, 2011; Rastogi, 2010; Tadili & Semma, 2015). In a country like
India, cloud computing technology will help build a new modern, pros-
perous India (Husain & Khanum, 2017). It will transform the nation
into an information Society. The cloud will help provide Government
services faster and cheaper, thereby accelerating IT adoption and use for
Algorithmic Governance.

3.7 Data Lakes

A data lake is a central storage location in an entity, corporation, or insti-
tution, to which data of any size and at any rate can be copied, with
the help of various import methods (initial, batch, streaming) in either
native or raw format. This might be any of the following forms; streams
of sensors, user contact logs, social media capture, feeds, repositories for
photos or recordings, or snapshots of databases from the enterprise’s IT
structures (ERP, CRM, etc.). The purpose is to extract meaningful infor-
mation by exploring the data to be used in services and applications, train
mathematical models, and transform it. A manufacturer of home appli-
ances, for example, could equip devices with sensors that monitor client
usage patterns. It will give the captured sensor data back to the producer,
connecting with the consumer data. The manufacturer can then imple-
ment a predictive maintenance algorithm on the unified collected data to
extract meaningful information for promotional campaigns, which could
help the marketers provide customer-tailored added services. By consol-
idating data into the lake, data can be connected with other sources
without crossing system or organizational boundaries (Klettke, Awolin,
Störl, Müller, & Scherzinger, 2017). The data scientist collaborates with
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 49

other divisions like IT, marketing, or the R&D department to provide the
required information/data. The data lake needs to help data scientists to
analyze the data, and it also shares results by posting or granting access to
the data warehouse. The notion of processing data of any type and size
using any import method (initial, batch, streaming) presents challenges
to the storage infrastructure. Thus, additional storage space in the form
of cloud storage must deal with performance issues arising on account
of varying file sizes. Since information is stored on the lake in its orig-
inal format, data scientists face a challenge with data integration. Before
extracting analytical results, the data scientist needs to profile the informa-
tion to understand the structure, consistency, and data schema. The next
step is to have relevant data extracted and converted from the raw data
into a format that correlates with other knowledge. Data scientist follows
three steps to extract meaningful information from the data—data prepa-
ration, data analytics, and result provisioning. Data lakes have also been
criticized for rapidly transforming into ‘Data Swamps.’ The danger stems
from the potential lack of data control, pipelines, software, and users for
processing. The absence of control might have legal insinuations (Burk
& Miner, 2020). Going ahead with the implementation of Algorithmic
Governance, the Government would require various data lakes in different
departments for decision-making purposes.

3.8 Digital Twin Technology

The concept of Digital Twin was introduced in the year 2002. Since
the inception of this technology, it has become essential to system engi-
neering. At the forefront of the Industry 4.0 transition, Digital Twin
is facilitated by advanced data processing and access to the Internet
of Things (IoT). The amount of data available from manufacturing,
healthcare, and smart city environments has increased with IoT. By devel-
oping a linked physical and virtual twin (Digital Twin), the Digital Twin
will tackle the challenge of seamless integration between IoT and data
analytics. A Digital Twin environment makes it possible to analyze rapidly
and make real-time decisions through accurate analytics. To put it simpler,
it is a complex model of a device, process, or service that is virtual.
Thus an object, a factory, or even a business service can consist of
Digital Twins. A Digital Twin’s vision includes incorporating the busi-
ness, contextual, and sensor data from physical systems or processes into
the virtual network (Madni, Madni, & Lucero, 2019).
50 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

The Digital Twin model allows real-time monitoring of systems

and processes to promote research and develop educated technology
roadmaps. It pursues timely data review to fix issues before they occur
and plan thoroughly to reduce preventive maintenance by combining the
virtual and physical worlds. The usage of Digital Twins has increased dras-
tically in smarter cities, for planning and developing them along with
increasing the amount of connectivity. Moreover, manufacturers can use
this technology to keep track of the products for saving time and money
and provide real-time suggestions on machine performance and feed-
back on the production line. Digital Twins coupled AI algorithms can
generate greater accuracy as the computer can carry vast data required
for arrangement and prediction analysis. The Digital Twin will enable
the manufacturer to test the product and the device in actual context
to generate a more considerable valuable asset.
Moreover, the Digital Twin can be profoundly used by healthcare
operators to provide real-time analysis of the body and propose smarter
predictions and decisions in real-time. It can also be used to support
predictive maintenance and continuing repair of medical device facilities.
The Digital Twin in the Medical World has the power to make life-saving
decisions with AI centered on real-time data (Fuller, Fan, & Day, 2019).
Digital twinning is a potential technology for many government areas
while making decisions.

3.9 Edge Computing

With the rapid advancement and development of mobile Internet and
Internet of Things (IoT) applications, traditional centralized cloud
computing faces severe challenges such as high latency, low spectral
efficiency, and non-adaptive form of communication. To solve these chal-
lenges, modern technology is driving a trend that moves centralized
cloud computing to the edge of network devices. Several cutting-edge
computing technologies from various backgrounds have emerged to
reduce latency, boost spectral efficiency, and support the massive form of
machine communication. In edge computing, extensive data generated by
different types of IoT devices can be processed at the edge of the network
instead of being transmitted to the centralized cloud infrastructure due
to bandwidth and energy consumption concerns. Edge computing can
offer a quicker response and better quality services compared to cloud
computing. Edge computing is more suitable for IoT to provide useful
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 51

and safe services for many end-users. Edge computing-based architecture

can be the future IoT infrastructure (Ai, Peng, & Zhang, 2018). End-
to-end responsiveness between the mobile and associated cloud is the
biggest challenge of cloud computing. The cloudlet, a mobility-enhanced
small-scale cloud Data Center (DC) located at the edge of the Internet,
is proposed to resolve this problem. A cloudlet is a trusted, resource-
rich server or computer cluster that is well connected to the Internet and
accessible to nearby mobile devices for use. The benefits of using cloudlets
are as follows.

• In comparison with the cloud, in its provisioning, a cloudlet needs

to be even more agile because the relationship with mobile devices is
highly dynamic due to consumer mobility and can be used to achieve
a higher degree of latency, a higher bandwidth.
• A VM handoff technology must be used to help user mobility to
automatically migrate the offloaded services to the second cloudlet
on the first cloudlet as a user moves away from the currently
associated cloudlet.
• It can be used as a first point contact for IoT sensor data, thereby
enforcing privacy policies to release the data into the cloud.
• Also, during network failures, if cloud services become unavailable,
the cloud service or denial-of-service attack can temporarily cover
the loss (Satyanarayanan, 2017).

In cloud computing, users program their code, whereas, in edge

computing, a series of computational functions are applied to the data
along the data propagation path. Thus, the infrastructure is not trans-
parent to the user. Most computation can be performed at the edge rather
than at the edge of the Cloud Centric. In this case, the computation
stream will assist in deciding which functions/computing should be used
and how the data is propagated. Moreover, the number of applications
running on top-node edge computing can be huge (Shi, Cao, Zhang, Li,
& Xu, 2016). Algorithmic Government would require the functionality
of edge computing as data will be massive, and latency issues will arise for
computations.
52 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

3.10 Granular Computing

In recent years, the emergence of ubiquitous computing has led to
a drastic rise in data collection, data generation, and automated data
processing, including both non-personal and personal data. These data
are frequently used and reused by various stakeholders in their original
and updated form and are released online or on the Internet. Under
the resulting dynamic data flow environments, it is becoming increas-
ingly difficult for people to manage data from concerted data flows.
Granular computing was first coined in the year 1997 to propose a new
computational technique for performing human-data interaction (HDI),
which suggests ‘placing the human being at the center of data flows and
providing mechanisms for citizens to communicate explicitly with these
systems and data’ (Mortier, Haddadi, Henderson, McAuley, & Crowcroft,
2014). In a given semantic context, information granulation includes the
ability to discern necessary from unnecessary detail, and when used for
interaction with data structures, often the ability to determine the motives
of individuals, i.e., the pragmatics of a given piece of information. Both
are exceedingly complex activities (Noy et al., 2013). The task requires
the computers to detect and process the information in a manner that
competes with human reasoning abilities.
Moreover, it offers tools and techniques for granularly representing and
reasoning and the theoretical foundations to integrate the various granular
modules. This integration’s primary goal is to amplify human intelligence
capabilities by using algorithmic processing and networking competen-
cies for enabling interactive human feedback. For realizing such a kind
of man-machine relationship, processing such kind of granular informa-
tion is necessary. It provides an accurate representation of the social and
natural system, which are organized into various levels. Different levels
concentrate on different levels of granularities, which are distinguished by
varying sizes of grain. The redundant, irrelevant information is removed,
and the emphasis is placed on the proper level of abstraction to support
and augment the collaborative planning process and iteratively updated
visualization of user suggestions. Ideas are automatically generated in the
form of a floor plan that expresses common ideas of the persons involved
and immediately reacts with feedback. The automatically generated floor
map helps participants immediately recognize flaws in their ideas, visually
discover commonalities of and differences between ideas, and possibili-
ties and opportunities that would otherwise not be obvious to them. For
 3 TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES 53

the generation of the floor plan, a granular spatial planning tool is used,
whose data structure is based on the granular geometry (Yao, 2005). For
citizen-centric services and processes, granular computing will be helpful
for the implementation of Algorithmic Government.

3.11 Fog of Things (FoT)

The fog computing paradigm is one of the kinds of IoT-based plat-
forms that provide computing, storage, and networking capabilities
between devices and overcome traditional cloud services’ limitations.
This platform’s main characteristic features are wireless access, widespread
geographical distribution, mobility, location awareness and low latency,
real-time applications, heterogeneity support, etc. The most significant
advantage of using Fog of Things is that systems don’t need Internet
connectivity. Moreover, it is capable of improvising bandwidth capacity.
Furthermore, it can extend cloud computing competence to the edge
of the network even without Internet connectivity. In Fog computing,
small servers locally perform the data processing by using all the network
edge processing capacity and further distributing the IoT services in the
network edge through a message and service-oriented middleware.
The Fog of Things platform comprises the FoT device, FoT Gateway,
FoT Server, FoT profile, Applications, and FoT profiles. FoT-Devices are
the essential components of the system paradigm of FoT that performs
the most basic functionality of the FoT-based platform. It transforms
the raw data into structured content, which is then passed through the
FoT gateway for easy access to other devices. All the FoT devices do not
require an Internet connection. FoT gateways act as ‘small local servers’
and can be distributed across diverse geographical areas, offering FoT
scalability and enhancing the overall response time.
Furthermore, FoT-based servers act as a storage platform with
enhanced management capabilities. FoT profiles are included to foster
and optimize the management of the distributed characteristics of the
FoT paradigm (Prazeres & Serrano, 2016). Using this paradigm, FoT
services provide a homogeneous interface enabling all the functionality
required to interact with resources present in the cloud. This feature helps
to implement many Algorithmic decision-making models.
54 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

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 CHAPTER 4

Can AI Replace Government for Decision

Making

Abstract This chapter argues whether it is possible to replace humans

with machines for specific services. With the rising market potential
of Artificial Intelligence and its related technologies, policy-makers and
government bodies identify areas where it can be put to improve govern-
ments’ functioning and deliver considerable benefit to society. AI can
be useful for the Government as it enhances capabilities like sensing,
thinking, and acting. It also reduces paperwork, backlogs, and improves
predictions. But the biggest challenge is Algorithmic Bias, which identi-
fies systematic and repeatable errors that result in unequal results, such as
the privilege of one arbitrary group of users over the others.

Keywords Algorithmic bias · AI benefits · AI-driven government ·

Human decision making

4.1 Artificial Intelligence

and the Future of Humans
Modern AI technologies, algorithms, and computer systems have strongly
influenced the world in the twenty-first century. The increasing integra-
tion of AI has threatened the prominence of human skills and proficiencies

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 57

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_4
58 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

in different tasks. Both humans and robonoids work with cognitive func-
tion skills to perform the job assigned to them like problem-solving,
learning, planning, thinking, and observing. Various experts argue that
AI-based technologies will threaten human effectiveness and portend
human agency, capabilities, and human autonomy. These algorithms
driven computer programs will exceed human skills and intelligence, such
as complex decision making, sophisticated analytics, pattern recognition,
speech analytics, natural language processing.
Despite the positive consequential benefits of AI automation, there are
fundamental differences in the human psyche and Artificial Intelligence
systems that cannot be replaced by machines completely. The human
mind is far more capable of performing more straightforward tasks than
AI-based machines. The human brain possesses the ability to integrate
emotional intelligence into the decision-making process and is better
aware of facts, figures, and the surrounding environment. Moreover,
humans’ experiences during their lives also assist the decision-making
process, thereby enhancing the decision’s validity and conformity. On
the contrary, decisions implemented through AI systems are an outcome
of the data fed into the system and its processing, which needs to be
designed by human beings to perform diversified tasks. AI is the creation
of human brains, and thus, AI cannot completely replace humans (Eglash
et al., 2020). The machine can only assist the decision-making body, but
the power to make decisions or introduce changes still is concentrated on
human beings.
However, there is a new need to have laws and practices to ensure
that the computer science, computer programming, and AI development
process is under the control of humans so that AI robotic machines do
not harm humans. AI should be used to increase the effectiveness of
human work rather than replace human jobs to avoid the unemployment
crisis soon (Fitzpatrick, 2018). Though AI developments can significantly
contribute to society, it can also lead to unemployment problems in
the country, giving rise to numerous other issues like a truncated stan-
dard of living, health problems, growing poverty, social impediments, etc.
(Jakimovski, 2010). AI machines are indebted to solve the stated issues
by recompensing taxes just like humans to curb this problem. The fees
received by smart devices or robots can be used for improving the social
status of the society b arranging for vocational training programs and
up-skilling initiatives for people who might have lost their jobs to smart
machines (Paul, 2018).
 4 CAN AI REPLACE GOVERNMENT FOR DECISION MAKING 59

The advancement and progression in AI development activities have

created an entirely new range of human careers replaced by smart
machines. This synthesizes the need to have new social skills to fill up
these technical positions in the era of computers and robots, such as
design mindset, cross-cultural competence, virtual collaboration, adap-
tive thinking, computational thinking, and intelligent management skills.
Müller and Bostrom (2016) suggested that the human workforce should
be regularly retained or re-educated to successfully meet the talent need
for the changing demand of the working place in modern workplaces. In
a nutshell, a new educational system has required redesigning its academic
curriculum to equip new skills and knowledge for automated workplaces
of the future (Rainie & Anderson, 2017).
Thus, a collaborative intelligence method is much more appropriate.
Humans and machines work together, enhancing and uplifting each other
competencies, utilizing each other’s strengths and capabilities to generate
long-term gains. Thus, the governing body needs to understand how
humans can complement machines’ work and how devices can enhance
what humans do best.

4.2 Artificial Intelligence

for Government & Politics
With the rising market potential of Artificial Intelligence and its related
technologies, policy-makers and government bodies identify areas where
it can be put to improve governments’ functioning and deliver consider-
able benefit to society. Policy-makers most commonly use the following
two approaches for successfully integrating any new application into its
existing processes.

• Preemptive approach: In this approach, the government prohibits

the use of an old-fashioned application that poses a potential threat
to the social order
• Permission-less innovation: In this kind of approach, the govern-
ment prioritize experimenting with new technologies as a default
measure for solving problems as they arise

The AI-based data-driven policy is the most effective solution which

the government can utilize for the same. Before the launch of AI, the
60 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

decision-making process was solely based on assumptions, beliefs, and

personal experiences. Consequently, there was no means by which the
accuracy of the policies implemented could be confirmed. But the emer-
gence of data-driven technologies enabled the government to process
a large number of datasets to be more responsive to citizens and cut
down the distortions associated with assumptions-based decision-making
processes (Thierer, Castillo O’Sullivan, & Russell, 2017).

Remunerations for Using AI in Politics

1. The data-based decision-making process possesses the capability to
detect corruptions made in the system.
2. AI-enabled systems and methods can better evaluate any candi-
date based on his past work experience, education qualifications,
leadership behavior and skills, and behavioral responses to different
situations.
3. AI and related technologies can improve system productivity and
performance by critically analyzing the system’s existing ambiguities.
4. AI-based techniques can help the government in reducing high cost
which is wasted in political campaigning.
5. Also, AI-enabled systems can be put to use for removing all fake
news and false agendas.

AI-Driven Digital Government: The Engagement Model

The AI-based Engagement model determines decisions based on people’s
engagement over social media platforms. The main benefit of using the
Engagement model is that it enables the government to improve citi-
zens’ decision-making process and improve the e-voting procedures. The
government authorities can use the Engagement model of the decision-
making process to identify areas that are not performing well and places
where they are best-performing. Based on the information sourced,
government bodies can formulate strategies for improving the lives of the
citizens of their respective nations and resolve the problems as they arise.
Despite the enormous advantageous benefits of the Engagement model,
surveillance of every step is an invasion of personal privacy, which distorts
individual freedom of thinking and could lead to arousal of ethical ques-
tions relating to the use of someone’s data. Additionally, replacing human
 4 CAN AI REPLACE GOVERNMENT FOR DECISION MAKING 61

forces with machines is yet another problem for public entities as it is likely
to deteriorate the nation’s employment status (Butterworth, 2018; Kaya,
2019).

AI Applications for Government

The following is the list of potential areas where the government uses the
potential benefits of AI-based technologies to improve its performances
and efficiency.

1. The government can allocate public servants and bureaucrats with

better quality work using the AI-enabled systems to uplift their
workers’ satisfaction level.
2. Also, the government can make use of AI technologies for
automating the repetitive tasks and saving human costs and time.
3. Using AI techniques, the government could re-employ staff and
upskill them to improve the administration’s functioning.
4. The government can offer jobs in the areas that are much more
recompensing and involve creative thinking and empathy, which AI
and other related technologies cannot replace (Kumawat, 2020).

4.3 How AI Can Benefit the Government

1. Sensing: AI can substitute human sensual capabilities, speed up the
more straightforward tasks such as visual detection. For instance,
AI technologies can inevitably examine street traffic with the help of
cameras in real-time, which the government can use to make the best
use of public transport facilities for reducing pollution and managing
the ever-increasing flow of traffic. Also, the government can use
bots for robotic process automation to simplify jobs and speed up
the various tasks that were earlier handled by human forces. Some
examples include form filling, moving files and folders, copying and
pasting, managing historical files, scrapping the data over the web,
etc., as shown in Fig. 4.1.
2. Thinking: Machine learning, natural language processing, and other
AI-based technologies can analyze a large chunk of data much
quicker and efficiently than humans. Consequently, the government
can use these novice forms of techniques to improve the delivery
62 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Copying &
Opening Email & Logging into Web Filling in the
PasƟng text, files
AƩachments Systems forms
or objects

Reading &
CollecƟng Social ConnecƟng to Following if/then
WriƟng the
Media StaƟsƟcs Systems APIs decision rules
databases

ExtracƟng
Moving files and Scraping data Making
structures data
folders from the web calculaƟons
from documents

Fig. 4.1 Some functions that can be replaced by bots (Source Author Creation)

outcomes of teaching and learning process by simplifying the daily-

routine-based administration tasks or modifying learning content
according to the learner’s need.
3. Acting: AI and its applicative devices and technologies such as
chatbots or virtual assistants can simplify humans’ decision-making
process. These supportive technologies free up a significant amount
of time, enabling the front-line workers to focus on activities that
require their thorough attention to improve the quality of services
delivered. For instance, in the Winter Olympics conducted in South
Korea, many robots fortified with AI-powered translation software
were castoff to provide info to visitors and players (Atalla, 2019).
4. Slashing Paperwork Burdens: By automating the daily tasks, most
of the paperwork will be mechanized. Before this, government
officials waste a considerable amount of time in completing paper-
work. Instead, according to the estimates suggested by the federal
government, documenting and recording information consumes a
half -billion staff hours each year, at the cost of more than $16 billion
in wages alone, which can be significantly reduced by deploying AI
technologies.
5. Reducing Backlogs: Government officials can use AI technologies
for reducing the turn around time or delays. Long waiting times are
both frustrating for the customers and citizens and employee forces.
The Social Security Administration has more than one million cases
 4 CAN AI REPLACE GOVERNMENT FOR DECISION MAKING 63

unresolved at the end of fiscal 2016, worsening the problematic situ-

ation. Even the US Patent and Trademark Office has more than
558,091 patent applications pending by the end of the fiscal year
2019, hampering the startups’ success and work. These large data
backlogs can be easily removed.
6. Improving Prediction: Natural language processing and machine
learning technologies can expose patterns and provide probable
solutions to problems. For example, the Army’s Medical Depart-
ment uses a machine learning algorithm to evaluate the seriousness
of wounds for assisting the medical department in arranging treat-
ment or emigration (Deloitte, 2020).

4.4 Impact of AI on the Nature

of the Government
Even though AI is anticipated to exceed human capabilities and func-
tions, it is also forecasted to expand human labor. The finance sector is
already witnessing the potential benefits of AI technologies in improved
investment strategies proposed by the financial advisors. Moreover, AI
diagnostic systems in the field of medicines are much more reliable
and accurate than assumptions made by doctors while scrutinizing the
patients’ problems. Instead, according to McKinsey’s estimates on some
400 cases, AI has helped in delivering a significant value of $6 trillion to
almost 19 industries across different sectors by improving their human
tasks. Even the government functions have started using AI to provide
better customer services and automating simple tasks wherever possible.
For instance, China has already started using robots to retrieve case histo-
ries and verdicts to reduce the lawyers’ workloads. AI-enabled systems
have enabled Chinese courts to track messages and comments made on
social media, which can be used as evidence in the court. Even the traffic
police in China are using facial recognition systems for identifying and
convicting offenders. Despite the best of intentions, human systems are
vulnerable to preconception and suffer from insentient biases. On the
other hand, algorithm-based decisions are based on evidence, thereby
reducing the risks associated with subjective decision making of discrete
judges (World Government Summit, 2018).
The government’s digitization movement is led by the need to have
a system in place for a legal settlement and detecting fraud. AI-based
64 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

systems are vital for renovating the public sector and reducing backlogs
while simultaneously lowering costs. Progressing democracies into the age
of big data is critical for reducing the public sector’s dysfunctional areas
and underpinning government lapses and errors. AI-enabled systems inte-
grated into the government system have committed to improving service
deliveries for inhabitants and reducing civil servants’ work. With the elim-
ination of some government functions, AI can foster open government
development, supplementing its democratic operations (Forbes, 2019).
On the other hand, the survey results organized by the Center for the
Governance of Change at IE University in Spain explained the negative
consequences of replacing politicians with machines. The biggest problem
of AI is its inability to think and respond rationally. First and foremost
is that the devices are not as objective and rational as humans. More-
over, the algorithm-based systems are primarily controlled by humans,
and thus, there are high chances that human biases can sneak into auto-
mated decision-making systems. Furthermore, if the data fed into the
system is problematic, the commendations generated are also expected to
be challenging. Moreover, computer systems are not proficient enough
to capture the factors at work in human society and how they interact.
And even if one particular model generates an accurate result in a specific
instance, the results are likely to differ from varying places and time-zones
(Samuel, 2019).

4.5 Biasness Due to AI

According to recent estimates, humanity today generates a trillion
amounts of data every day, which, if printed, will waste a considerable
duration of time on the earth. A large percentage share of the infor-
mation is personal data, including health-related information, banking
transactions. Moreover, a growing share of personal data flowing across
businesses and Government, the risk of data breach increases. People
involved in these transactions have minimal awareness of the collected
data or fed into the algorithmic software. Moreover, to detect patterns
and determine behavior based on the patterns identified in the data,
algorithmic decision-making and assisting systems are being used. For
instance, banks will use algorithms to identify possible fraud transac-
tions based on past fraudulent conduct patterns and use algorithms
to segment their customers into distinct categories according to their
needs and preferences. Algorithmic bias is defined as a concept that
 4 CAN AI REPLACE GOVERNMENT FOR DECISION MAKING 65

is used to discriminate between the results obtained from the analysis

of discrete datasets. Discrimination can be described as an unwarranted
difference between individuals, based on their membership, or perceived
membership, in a specific party or category. To extract meaningful infor-
mation, algorithms must differentiate between individuals or groups to
provide sufficient estimation of someone’s creditworthiness. An algorithm
is considered well-calibrated only when risk scores reflect the real scenarios
of the people who give this score. To be more specific, algorithmic bias
identifies systematic and repeatable errors that result in unequal results,
such as the privilege of one arbitrary group of users over the others. For
example, a credit score algorithm can refuse a loan without being unrea-
sonable if it is consistent in weighing the relevant financial requirements
(Rovatsos, Mittelstadt, & Koene, 2019). To remove the element of bias-
ness from the algorithmic decision making, corporations must conduct
episodic audits.

• Conduct Audit: Frequent audits should be conducted to delete the

biasness from the datasets.
• Get Feedback from Users: It is imperative to seek feedback from
the customers to discover content that was inappropriately marketed
to the customers using conversational and virtual chatbots and wide-
ranging other virtual AI assistants.
• Ensure that AI resources are straightforward and explainable:
It is imperative to avoid the black box effect. For any automated
activity, developers must explain why an algorithm engages in a
particular course of action.

Some recent examples faced Algorithmic bias due to which replacing

Government completely with AI looks tough.

• Amazon, the world-leading e-commerce retailer, recently discon-

tinued the usage of recruiting algorithms to deal with gender biases
and include an equal composition of males and females. Before
this, the algorithm was automatically programmed to identify word
patterns in resumes rather than specific skill sets, and these data were
benchmarked against the company’s overwhelmingly male to assess
the suitability of the applicant.
66 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

• New York City uses an AI-based algorithmic decision model to keep

track of kids, track when the neighborhood requires a fire-station,
help the government process large datasets, process DNA samples at
crime scenes to identify the victim. The court uses this algorithm to
forecast whether the suspect should be imprisoned or unconfined on
bail pending trial, etc. Recently, a man was wrongly convicted for a
crime never done by him. (Brookings, 2020).

4.6 Challenges for Government

While Adopting AI
1. Effective use of data: The main problem is that both private and
public institutions are not designed in a fashion to handle and
exploit the advantage of the large volume of datasets. The majority
of these institutions have a basic understanding of these datasets.
Moreover, organizations lack the required capability to understand
and manage the data.
2. Data and AI skills: Organizations do not have the appropriate skills
required to manage AI solutions within an enterprise. Specifically,
public agencies lack the core AI skills to deploy as well as operate AI
solutions.
3. The AI environment: The AI landscape is very dynamic and ever-
changing. There are a few well-known players in more developed
technology markets, so customers know where to go. For example,
the cloud environment is dominated by Alibaba, Amazon, Google,
and Microsoft, which account for about 84% of the global public
cloud market. A large number of potential buyers are unaware of
the advancements taking place in the field of AI.
4. Legacy-culture: Both organizations are faced with difficulties in the
implementation of emerging technologies. However, public agen-
cies appear to be less flexible than their peers in the private sector.
The employees present in the public sector are less motivated to
experiment and adopt a transformative technology AI (Weforum,
2020).
 4 CAN AI REPLACE GOVERNMENT FOR DECISION MAKING 67

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 CHAPTER 5

Applications of Algorithmic Government

Around the World

Abstract This chapter presents different progressive steps taken world-

wide concerning the automation of decision making in the public sector.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 100 nations used contact
tracing apps that used the Artificial Intelligence technique to manage
the spread of infection. In general, a lot of experimentation is going on
around the world. The postal services in America, digital farming tech-
nology in Japan, Lawbots in China, AI-based electoral candidates in New
Zealand, military surveillance in Australia, AI-based healthcare in Africa,
and Roads & transportation improvement in Europe are some of the
prominent areas around the world which are thriving on the usage of
Artificial Intelligence technology in the public sector for automated deci-
sion making. Many countries are investing huge amounts in technology
adoption in the near future.

Keywords Contact tracing apps · Lawbots · AI elections · AI investment

policy

Decision making actively governs the policies of the Government in the

interest of the citizens. With the upcoming and emerging technology, the
human workforce can be replaced by future technological advancements,
which ease the automaton process in the interests of the public. During

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 69

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_5
70 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 100 nations used contact tracing apps1
that used Artificial Intelligence techniques to manage the spread of infec-
tion. But in general, a lot of experimentation is going on around the
world.2 The following are the case studies of few countries depicting their
algorithmic decision-making process in the public sector.

5.1 America
The postal services in America handle quite a large number of volumes.
Postal service is the country’s basic functionality and is used by the
majority of sectors, including education, personal, business, legal, etc. The
postal service in the past has not provided efficient and reliable services in
all the areas of the sectors, which could have been beneficial to both rural
and urban areas alike. Although it has been used in majorly, all sectors yet
the postal services have not been able to deliver. They have not been able
to cope up with the revenues, and operating costs are just increasing. The
postal services have been in loss for more than a decade, and there is a net
loss of 3.9 billion dollars. The postal services have a budget around the
fuel cost, and the postal services vehicles have been involved in so many
road accidents. Due to the uncertain nature of the financial status, postal
services in America are at a halt. The postal service sector is also desig-
nated as a high-risk sector due to the postal delivery persons and vehicles’
deaths and accidents. To overcome this issue, the government has started
to build autonomous cars for postal services and mails and parcels using
AI technology.
Autonomous vehicles designed are based on technology that uses high
tech cameras, and the use of radar and lidar makes it easy to navigate. Arti-
ficial Intelligence uses the data that is collected from cameras, radars, and
the driving vehicle system makes further analysis. It combines the sensors’
information with the detailed digital maps that provide the layout, traffic
signs, speed limits, and other necessary information related to the roads.
The complex vehicle system can also communicate with surrounded vehi-
cles to coordinate with others and avoid collisions and road accidents. The
vehicles’ level till now is seen as they use the autopilot for navigation, i.e.,

1 Contact Tracing Apps around the World—https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/

05/07/1000961/launching-mittr-covid-tracing-tracker/.
2 AI Policy around the world—https://www.holoniq.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/
02/HolonIQ-2020-AI-Strategy-Landscape.pdf.
 5 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD 71

they require a physical driver to intervene in some hazardous situation if it

arises. With the increase of AI technology, it is seen as shortly autonomous
vehicles will be made to deliver postal service emails, parcels, etc. There
is no setup of framework architecture for all the legal implications, so
that remains unclear. The AI system also learns driving patterns from the
humans and mistakes performed by them. Based on the vehicle’s level,
they can then provide the physical driver if the requirement demands.
Manufacturers are already in the race to build autonomous cars, and based
on the investment, it seems that the postal service sector is committed to
integrating autonomous vehicles into the delivery model.
The AI technology in the postal services industry will be beneficial as
well as cost-effective. Since the autonomous vehicles are based on elec-
tricity, the fuel cost is saved. AI technology to implement autonomous
vehicles will help the workers as they will not suffer from fatal accidents
and deaths since the vehicle’s system will communicate with other cars, so
chances of collision and accidents are minimal. The autonomous vehicles
will make administrative work easier and faster. Though the technology
seems to be near, many problems may arise as the project implementations
come closer. The workers who are already in the job might lose their jobs,
the delivery of packages and parcels is a topic yet to be discussed. If done
well, the postal services in America will become efficient and faster. If the
technology is not implemented in the correct order, this also threatens
to displace human labor. It also raises the questions of data privacy and
many such problems. Yet, it seems it will solve many issues shortly.
Apart from the postal services department, many use cases across
multiple levels are being planned up in the United States. As per a report3
on US federal agency (Engstrom, Ho, Sharkey, & Cuéllar, 2020), there
are 12 use cases either identified or implemented for the Office of Justice
Programs, 10 for Securities and Exchange Commission, 9 for National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, 8 each for Food and Drug Admin-
istration and Geological Survey, 7 for Social Security Administrations, 6
for Patens and Trademark Office, 5 for Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 4
for Customs and Border Protection.

3 Government by Algorithm—https://law.stanford.edu/publications/government-by-
algorithm-a-review-and-an-agenda/.
72 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

5.2 Asia
There are various growing concerns around the world. One of them
is agricultural sustainability, which also includes a shortage of water in
Japan’s countryside (Doan & Kosaka, 2020). Sustainable development
is the world’s demand at the current moment. Using and developing
agriculture is such a way that we meet the present generations’ needs
without compromising the needs of the future generation. In the agricul-
tural sector, future generations must take care of the land to provide them
food and productivity in the farming sector. Using agricultural land for
the sake of our current needs will be very difficult for the prospect. As we
know, the fertilizers used up deteriorate the soil’s quality and make it less
productive as the years progress. The world is also facing a water shortage,
and providing water to agricultural land is an emergent issue. The inexpe-
rienced farmers do not know how to maintain the land’s productivity and
keep the current generation’s needs. The choice of their fertilizers makes
the soil suitable for one or two seasons, and later the quality of the land
is degraded. There is less production with the ground’s degradation, and
meeting the current needs will be a difficult task.
Following this issue, digital farming technology has been developed
in Japan. This technology, with the use of IoT devices and AI-enabled
devices, collects the data from the farming practices and the surrounding
environment. This data is analyzed, and it tells the inexperienced farmers
to use the techniques followed by experienced farmers for sustainable
development. The knowledge provided by these experienced farmers is
used for sustainable development in the agricultural sector. This digital
technology can help in better decision making by analyzing the current
situation and environmental surroundings and will suggest better farming
techniques that can hold up the soil for better productivity in the future as
well. These technologies can help those farmers where the supply of water
is limited. This technology is capable of bringing a massive change in the
sustainable development of the agricultural sector. Inexperienced growers
generally use more fertilizers and water, so using experienced cultivators
can help control the quality of crops and maintain a sustainable devel-
opment environment. AI analyzes the soil and plant data and uses the
knowledge to find the minimum amount of water required to serve the
purpose. Using digital farming, the IoT sensors collect information and
send data for AI devices that analyze and suggest better farming methods
for sustainable development.
 5 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD 73

Digital farming in Japan is already being used and is highly praised.

As we know the problem of water shortage, this technique of farming
can primarily reduce this problem. This technique is inexpensive and
highly efficient. Implementing this technique has brought a change in
agriculture, where the use of water had no limits. Still, the usage of
new technology manages how much water is sufficient for the land to
grow a particular crop type. This technique will raise the value of farming
and save both land and water for future generations. This technology
has made sustainable development possible in the field of the agricultural
sector. It will give the experience to those farmers as well who are new
in the farming sector. It will help the newcomers adapt to the farming
techniques while using less water and fewer fertilizers that will increase
the soil’s age. This technique will maintain the productivity of the land.
This technique is also helpful in solving the problem of water shortage
in the world. This technology uses extensive experiences from experi-
enced farmers and uses the knowledge to develop sustainable agricultural
sector techniques. This technique has already shown Japan’s results and
is moving toward other nations like Taiwan, Vietnam, and China.
Apart from farming, Japan also allowed an AI bot4 to participate in
elections for mayor’s post, and it was even claimed to be World’s first AI
Mayoral candidate. It was built on the dataset of the region and answered
most of the queries. A similar thing happened in New Zealand5 as well.
In the Chinese territory, AI is extensively used for managing the repet-
itive work of people in the Judiciary,6 and soon we may see Lawbots
giving judgments. Also, China is using AI aggressively in the Social Credit
Systems of its citizens for better trust and worthiness assessment.

5.3 Australia
In this twenty-first century, Governments worldwide are funding the tech-
nological sector for increased productivity and efficiency. Governance in
Australia is expanding its IT sectors and technologies for decision making

4 AI Mayoral Candidate—https://law.stanford.edu/publications/government-by-algori
thm-a-review-and-an-agenda/.
5 AI Candidate in NZ Elections—https://analyticsindiamag.com/worlds-first-ai-pow
ered-virtual-politician-sam-joins-the-electoral-race-in-new-zealand/.
6 AI in Chinese Judiciary—https://english.bjinternetcourt.gov.cn/2019-07/01/c_190.
htm.
74 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

(Management Advisory Committee, 2002). Artificial Intelligence is intro-

duced in the management to replicate humans’ work, and the task can be
done repeatedly, faster, and efficiently. The use of Artificial Intelligence
in the Defence sector is a new beginning to this era. The problem earlier
was unable to detect weapons, vehicles, and other military-related stuff.
The section had to rely on the data observed and collected by humans,
resulting in errors and mistakes. Managing a large amount of data and
complex maintenance are the issues in the military workforce.
The military has faced this issue for ages, but now the introduction of
AI has brought a new change to this industry, making it much easier to
perform these tasks. Government agencies are using AI to recognize gun
truck’s military tanks, and many more. Using cognitive automation has
brought this change. To reduce the human workforce, AI assistants can
be used to increase the military’s readiness and the effectiveness of the
operations in more constrained environments where humans can barely
reach. AI assistants have accelerated the speed of work and reduce human
errors. This also creates a broader perspective in the training of other
military persons in wider aspects of the field. The training of AI and
machine learning systems is done for military vehicles. Moreover, new
trucks and tanks are being designed using AI technology to help in better
and faster decision making in the real-time war situation. Monitoring and
processing of data collected by the machines for military surveillance. The
Australian defense has also brought in augmented reality to maintain these
systems to close the skill gaps between humans and automated systems.
The government is also initializing facial recognition methods, solving
logistics problems, and much more in the military tasks. Support games
for military training and creating life-like war situations can be used to
visualize such cases. Better solutions can be designed using the use of
AI technology. The NSW business OCIUS technology claims using AI
technology, using cameras to detect electronic hearing, and much more.
These things work 24*7 and provide continuous coverage at a low cost
without affecting a single human life. Automation of combat weapons will
be a lifeline for the human workforce. In contrast, speed weapon devel-
opment and identifying targets by the AI technology will play a crucial
role in security surveillance activities.
The impact of the solution will define the future trends of military
services around the world. The AI technology-based decision making has
been so useful in the early stages of its implementation. When this AI
technology is fully implemented can make life so easy for the defense of
 5 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD 75

the country. The detection of weapons, military trucks, under the sea
monitoring all this has been possible due to the introduction of AI tech-
nology. The Australian government has already approved 29.9 million
dollars to increase the capability of Artificial Intelligence and machine
learning in the country. The AI technology-based decision making in the
military has proven to be faster, less of errors, and least damage to human
life. AI technology is creating real like war situations, and the troops’
training had been better after that. Implementation of AI technology
can help use the human workforce in those areas where AI technology
is least developed. More efficient and capable systems in the defense
forces strengthen and provide a computation of data faster and predict
the results much quicker.

5.4 Africa
In Africa, AI helps the continent with some of the root problems,
including poverty, education, sustainable development, delivering health-
care, and eradicating diseases (Besaw & Filitz, 2019). Many Governments
have given access to innovative and productivity-boosting technologies
that can help the continent grow. Healthcare systems in Africa face many
challenges on a day-to-day basis. The governments face many structural
problems. There is a shortage of quality and equipped professionals and
services. The healthcare system of the countries in Africa does not match
the standards set up by the WHO. There is a lack of services provided
to the patients. Lack of awareness in the health sector is one reason
patients do not get the necessary treatment and care. There are lesser
health services policies framed. Even though the staff and medicines are
available, affordability comes into play. Poverty does not allow the needed
services to be in the reach of the patients. AI can plug and reduce these
gaps in the health sector. Many startups in the continent are building
AI-enabled technologies to focus on healthcare scenarios in the continent.
AI-enabled devices for healthcare can train the individuals in better
treatment and supplement themselves as staff for the healthcare depart-
ment. With high technology penetration, the professionals can focus on
more patients and give more time to the patients. AI technology can help
formulate better health policies, and these machines can better under-
stand the patterns in the spread of the disease. These devices can build
better solutions to tackle these situations. These devices can make the
76 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

healthcare system more active. The conditions which are not taken seri-
ously advance analysis techniques of AI can quickly figure out the problem
and, in advance, better tailor the treatment. AI technology can prevent a
disease from becoming a health crisis. The government is now looking at
these technologies to simplify the problem of healthcare on the continent.
With AI, technology health services will be much cheaper, readily avail-
able, and results in better treatment of the patient. AI technology is for
analysis and diagnosis. Using AI services in the sector has already resulted
in a faster and better understanding of the tests. It helps the working
professionals in finding out complex problems and their solutions. AI
tools as the online conversation and machine monitoring have extended
the services to millions and remote areas. AI technologies can be useful
in accurately predicting and prescribing treatment for people in remote
areas. AI technology can make life-saving decisions much quicker than
humans because it analyzes powers and capabilities with higher accuracy.
The government has started to incorporate AI technology in the
health sector. With an increase in population and the number of diseases
increasing, it is necessary to find a solution faster with higher accuracy. AI
technology has a massive impact on providing services to millions, even
in remote areas. The AI technology has helped in better prediction of
results and treatment. It proactively selects a therapy based on analysis
and prevents the disease from spreading. The AI technology has helped
find patterns in a particular condition and get better results faster with
high accuracy. AI technology in the African continent is a blessing in the
health sector. The AI technology better understands the disease and can
bring up the cause and ways to further spread the disease. AI offers vast
opportunities for how we know the condition and how we can improve
health. Using this technology, the healthcare system will provide better
delivery of services to the continent’s citizens.

5.5 Europe
There has always been a rapid increase in deaths due to road accidents.
Millions of lives are lost due to road accidents around the world. Even
with the variety of safety measures such as seat belts, helmets, and many
more, there has been an increase in road accidents. Pedestrians and
cyclists are on unprotected vehicles; hence, the injuries caused to them
are fatal. Every mistake on the road can have deadly consequences and
vulnerable. Life is lost; thus, something needs to be done to avoid these
 5 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD 77

accidents. Currently, the government is applying this AI technology in

autonomous driving and cameras to prevent accidents. Accidents can be
avoided either the virtual assistants and self-driving cars manage them-
selves and avoid accidents. AI technology here plays a significant role. The
German government has urged car manufacturers to use AI technology
and knowledge gathered from these devices to prevent road accidents and
fatal deaths every day. AI technology is new to Germany; hence the devel-
opments are still in the research phase, and later implementation of these
technologies is meant to be done. Road accidents are a matter of grave
concern, and if AI technology can help the world solve this issue, this will
be an excellent achievement for humans. The AI technology in Germany
has a goal of zero road accidents, and to achieve this, Artificial intelligence
technology is a must.
Artificial Intelligence will enable vehicles to make decisions that could
save lives. The sensors and cameras will detect the person on the road
either on a cycle or walking by. The AI technology will perform the task
based on the detection of critical points of human eyes, nose ears, and
detect the full body of the person. These points will help to discover the
posture and movement of the body. Using the detection analysis will be
made about how far the individual is and how they can be saved from
an accident. The system can detect if the person instantaneously comes in
front of the vehicle; the driver can get late in recognizing the danger and
applying breaks. Simultaneously, the AI-enabled technology will handle
this situation and inform the driver about it. AI technology can detect
pedestrians, cyclists and even avoid other cars coming in front of it. For
this, the vehicles must coordinate with other vehicles and find ways to
avoid collisions with each other. The German government has funded the
car manufacturing industry to use AI-enabled technology and integrate
this into the vehicles. However, to achieve this, we must grow toward the
world of autonomous driving. The government of Germany has already
stated its goals in this particular field. Once implemented, millions of road
accidents can be prevented using AI technology. AI technology can be a
boon to human life and make such decisions that could be lifesaving. All
this processing and analysis that is done should be computed exceptionally
fast because there will be no time to think and analyze in a real-time
scenario. AI technology is in the country’s early stages, so it will take
time to implement this when we see this happening in real-time.
AI technology-based decision making will have a considerable impact
on the vehicle manufacturing industry and humans as well. AI technology,
78 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

if utilized and implemented correctly, can turn out to be a life-saving

machine. Trials are in process in the country. The AI technology in vehi-
cles and to avoid road accidents is possible shortly. When the car can
detect people, other vehicles, and other things, the device will avoid colli-
sions. The car will collect the data from sensors and cameras; using this
data, the processing needs to be done, and detecting the person and
avoiding collision will be done through the AI-enabled system. AI tech-
nology can make decision making in real-time situations easy and free of
errors.
The European region seems to be the most advanced in terms of the
adoption of the Algorithmic Government. A survey by IE Center for
the Governance of Change7 suggested that a quarter of Europeans favor
technology-based decisions at the Government level. 43% of the respon-
dents from the Netherlands, 31% each from Germany and the United
Kingdom, 29% from Ireland, 28% from Italy, 26% from Spain, 25% from
France, and 19% from Portugal, responded affirmatively in favor of usage
of Algorithmic Decision Making at Government level. In fact, Estonia is
one of the most advanced regions in Europe with a robust E-Governance
infrastructure through schemes like E-Estonia. And now, it is moving
toward implementing AI in judicial systems8 just like the Chinese System.

5.6 Policy Level Progress Around the World

By 2030, China purposes to become the world’s leading AI innovator. For
this purpose, the country has published a national AI-based strategy and
has announced plans to invest a massive amount toward developing AI-
based skills. Beijing announced a US$2.1 billion AI-centric technology
park, and Tianjin plans to set up a US$16 billion AI fund. Money
is flowing from the private sector, too. In 2017, Chinese AI startups
received 48 percent of global AI venture funding, outpacing the United
States for the first time. China is recorded to be the second-highest
number of AI companies globally, behind the United States—and is home
to the most highly regarded AI corporation in the world (Deloitte, 2020).

7 European Tech Insights—https://docs.ie.edu/cgc/European-Tech-Insights-2019.pdf.

8 AI in Judicial System of Estonia—https://www.wired.com/story/can-ai-be-fair-judge-
court-estonia-thinks-so/.
 5 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD 79

India, the fastest-growing economy with the second largest popula-

tion globally has substantial stakes in the AI revolution. Recognizing
AI’s ability to turn economies and India’s need to strategize its future,
Hon’ble Finance Minister, mandated in his 2018–2019 budget address,
set up the AI National Program. In line with the above, NITI Aayog
has adopted a three-pronged approach—conducting exploratory proof-
of-concept AI projects in different regions, creating a national strategy
for developing a vibrant AI ecosystem in India, and working with various
experts and stakeholders. Since the beginning of this year, NITI Aayog
has collaborated with several leading AI technology-based companies
(NITI, 2020).
Europe is well equipped to take advantage of AI’s potential, not only
as a user but also as a developer and a creator. It has outstanding research
centers, creative start-ups and is a global leader. It has placed robotics
in the competitive manufacturing and services industries, ranging from
automobile to health, energy, financial services, and agriculture. Europe
has developed a robust computing infrastructure (e.g., high-performance
computers) that is important to the functioning of AI. In April 2018, the
EU Commission adopted the Correspondence on Artificial Intelligence,
a 20-page paper setting explaining the EU approach to AI. The goal of
the EU Commission is to increase the EU’s technical and industrial ability
and the involvement of the public and private sectors in the AI, to prepare
Europeans for the socio-economic changes brought about by AI, and to
ensure that an adequate ethical and legal structure is in place (Salami,
2020).
In May 2017, Finland’s Minister of Economic Affairs Mika Lintilä
appointed a steering group to investigate how Finland can become one
of the world’s leading countries in the field of AI technology. While the
group will not issue its final report until April 2019, two preliminary
reports have already been published. The Finnish government has started
to integrate the group’s findings into government policy. The first report,
Finland’s age of AI, explains Finland’s strengths and weaknesses in AI
and provides recommendations to turn Finland into a global leader of
AI. The second document, the Work in the Age of AI, corresponds to a
28 pager policy document on AI, which discussed the ethics and culture
while working with Artificial Intelligence.
80 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

5.7 Prominent Global Projects

There are many global projects which are using the concepts of Govern-
ment by Algorithms. They are either running successfully or are in
progress for their execution. Many departments are successfully working
toward adopting AI in their work processes and moving toward Algo-
rithmic methods. Table 5.1 shows the list of such projects and depart-
ments.

Table 5.1 List of prominent global projects under Algorithmic Government

S.No. Name of the project or department Scenario

1. US Citizenship and Immigration In 2015, the (USCIS) started using

Services (USCIS) chatbots; Emma managed the visitors
who inquired on the website and
handled more than 14 million
immigration calls. This software
automatically routes the user to the
required human agent for real-time
interaction. The chatbot uses natural
language processing to feed thousands
of instant messages, including various
usual migration issues and service
requests, such as a request for a visa
application status. It is all managed by
Algorithms
2. Canada’s AI Investment in Research Canada was the first nation to invest
and Talent a considerable amount to increase the
number of AI graduates and establish
a national research community based
on AI. It currently has the following
three institutes; the Alberta Machine
Intelligence Institute (AMII) in
Edmonton, the Vector Institute in
Toronto, and MILA in Montreal,
working toward building a
community that possesses the required
AI-based skills and competencies
3. Infocomm Development Authority The Government of Singapore
of Singapore recently collaborated with Microsoft
to create an interactive interface for
fulfilling its plan of building a Smart
Nation. The project primarily aims to
expose online public service websites
to all the cities and all age groups

(continued)
 5 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD 81

Table 5.1 (continued)

S.No. Name of the project or department Scenario

4. Denmark’s Digital Growth Denmark launched a digital growth

strategy in 2018 to make progress on
AI-related technologies and transform
digital businesses of the city for
Danish people
5. Atlanta Fire Rescue Department Georgia Institute of Technology,
Emory University, and the University
of California, Irvine worked with the
Atlanta Fire Rescue Department
(AFRD) to strengthen predictive
analytics software to forecast fire risk
scores for 5000 buildings and
mitigate the impact of the same
6. China’s Next Generation Artificial China launched a next-generation AI
Intelligence Development Plan development plan to support and
foster AI development strategies, to
further build an AI-based industry
worth 1 trillion RMB by 2030
7. City of Pittsburgh Traffic The City of Pittsburgh partnered with
Improvement Rapid Flow Technologies for building
SURTRAC (Scalable Urban Traffic
Control), automated traffic
optimization, and controller software
that can be used to oversee traffic,
decrease travel time and haul-time
8. India Under NITI Aayog, the government
has adopted an AI strategy to enable
Indians to develop competencies and
skills for securing quality jobs, putting
resources and scaling AI-usage across
sectors to amplify the level of
development happening across the
world
9. Singapore Armed Defense To deal with labor deficiencies, SAF is
using AI-based technologies for
combating the need for soldiers and
replacing them with sensors and
cameras, and other autonomous
weapons wherever possible
10. New York City Department of Social DSS is using AI for digitizing and
Services (DSS) automating the process of the online
experience for the visitors
82 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

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 CHAPTER 6

Applications of Algorithmic Government

in Different Sectors

Abstract This chapter showcases technological advancements and deci-

sion making in a developing country like India across multiple sectors.
The evolution of technology, a new stage of its adoption worldwide,
provided India an opportunity to define its brand of AI leadership
#AIforALL, where all AI prospects are applied to the country’s needs
and aspirations. Different sectors discussed in this chapter are Healthcare,
Agriculture, Education, Mobility & Transportation, Law Enforcement,
and Defense. Some common challenges faced in every sector across
different regions are lack of data, low intensity of AI research, low avail-
ability of AI workforce, unavailability of computing infrastructure, high
resource cost, privacy, and security.

Keywords Healthcare · Agriculture · Education · Mobility &

Transportation · Law Enforcement · Defense

6.1 Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of machines/systems to perform
human-like tasks such as learning, problem-solving, and decision making.
With advancements in data collection, processing, and computation,
AI can take over various schemes to enable connectivity and enhance

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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_6
84 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

productivity. The evolution of technology, a new stage of its adoption

worldwide, provided India an opportunity to define its brand of AI
leadership #AIforALL, where all the prospects of AI are applied to the
country’s needs and aspirations. AI is a collection of technologies that
enable machines to act like humans with higher levels of intelligence,
as shown in Fig. 6.1. Computer vision and audio processing techniques
can recognize the world around them by processing images and sound.
Natural language processing and inference engines enable AI systems to
analyze the collected information. These capabilities are attained by their
ability to learn from experiences and adapting over time. Every application
starts with extensive training data.
AI framework is a combination of the following three distinct but inter-
related components.

• Opportunity: AI can overcome the physical limitations of capital and

labor by enabling—

(a) Intelligent automation, i.e., automating complex physical

tasks that need adaptability.

Emerging AI Technologies Illustrative Solutions

Virtual Agents

Computer Vision

Sense
IdenƟty
Audio Processing AnalyƟcs

Natural Language CogniƟve

AI Technologies
Processing RoboƟcs
ArƟficial Intelligence Comprehend
Knowledge
RepresentaƟon Speech
AnalyƟcs

Machine Learning

Act Recommenda
Ɵon Systems
Expert Systems

Data
VisualizaƟon

Fig. 6.1 Artificial intelligence technologies (Source www.accenture.com)

 6 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT … 85

(b) Labor and capital augmentation, i.e., to let humans focus

on their role that adds more value, complementing their
capabilities and improving capital.
(c) Innovation diffusion, i.e., as the industry sectors are inter-
dependent, innovation in one industry can have positive
effects on another.

• AI for a greater good: AI can help in social development and

inclusive growth. It can support access to health facilities, real-time
advisory to farmers, and building smart cities effectively.
• AI garage for 40% of the world: AI helps institutions develop
solutions that can be implemented in the rest of the world. For
example, the Government can send AI-based answers, to diagnose
tuberculosis, once created in India to other countries like Africa.

Some of the vital sectors, along with the use cases, are presented in
the following sub-sections. They are majorly presented with respect to
developing nations like India.

6.2 Healthcare
AI and Robotics can be useful in many areas in healthcare, as shown in
Fig. 6.2. AI in healthcare (Mahajan et al., 2019) can help solve barriers
to healthcare facilities, mainly in rural areas that suffer from poor connec-
tivity and a limited number of professionals. The healthcare sector faces
the following challenges.

• Shortage of qualified professionals and services: There is a shortage

of qualified doctors, nurses, technicians, and infrastructure. It is
evident through numbers like 0.76 doctors, 2.09 nurses, and 1.3
hospital beds per 1000 population, whereas WHO recommends
1 doctor, 2.5 nurses, and 3.5 hospital beds per 1000 population,
respectively.
• Non-uniform accessibility to healthcare: Physical access is the
primary barrier to health services, which creates an imbalance
between rural and urban India. There are 34% of the urban popula-
tion and 66% of the rural population. Simultaneously, there are 33%
of doctors in rural areas and 67% of doctors in urban areas.
86 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Keeping
Well

Early
Tranining
DetecƟon

Research
AI & Diagnosis
RoboƟcs

End of Life Decision

Care Making

Treatement

Fig. 6.2 Areas for application of artificial intelligence in healthcare (Source

www.PWC.com)

• Affordability: Loans and sales make a portion of hospital costs in

rural areas (around 47%) and urban (around 31%) of assets. Poor
people suffer the most. According to the Government, 63 million
people face poverty every year due to their healthcare expenditures.
• Approach to essential healthcare: Due to lack of awareness, access
to healthcare services, and some behavioral factors, most people go
to the hospital when a disease reaches an advanced stage, which
increases the cost and reduces the chances of cure.
 6 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT … 87

Case Study
Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) is one of the best cancer hospitals in
Mumbai, India. It registered more than 67,000 new patients for treat-
ment in 2015, covering 23% of the patients from Maharashtra and 21.7%
of patients from different states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand,
and West Bengal to TMH. Patients had to go more than 18,000 km on
average for the treatment due to a lack of healthcare access. Patients were
stressed due to the financial expenses of traveling a long way. Therefore,
most of the patients chose to move to TMH when cancer develops to an
advanced stage, reducing the chances of cure. Early detection of cancer
can be crucial across the country. Machine learning solutions that aim to
assist a pathologist in making a diagnosis can help fill the healthcare gap.
For the implementation of this solution, quality pathology datasets should
be available. NITI Aayog is at an advanced stage for releasing a program
to develop a national repository of pathology images. Components of
this repository are ‘Digital Pathology,’ which requires all glass slides
generated at high resolution and magnification, followed by accurate,
comprehensive, and precise interpretation of the scanned images using
various data sources and information available from patient care. Another
project which is under discussion is Imaging Biobank for cancer. Human
cancer can be visualized by using imaging modalities. Certain image-
based features correlate to molecular and clinical features like mutation
(KRAS, etc.), prognostic power, receptor status, gene expression patterns,
intra-tumor heterogeneity, etc. Reports show an association between
radiographic imaging and tumor stage, metabolism, and gene/protein
profiles. These correlations, if established, may have a significant impact
as imaging is regularly used in clinics. This provides an opportunity to use
AI to improve decision making in cancer treatment at a low cost.
AptaaI glasses for blind and visually impaired people: AptaaI designed
by Aptagrim’s helps the user capture images sent to machine learning
models deployed on smart glasses. When the photos are processed, speech
is addressed to AptaaI glass, which the user hears via a built-in speaker on
the glass. It uses facial recognition Tensor flow model, image captioning
using CNN, and supports navigations with a voice to guide using Google
Maps. It helps visually impaired people to overcome environmental and
social challenges.
88 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

6.3 Agriculture
AI can help meet the increased demand for food and can address chal-
lenges like inadequate demand prediction, lack of irrigation, misuse of
pesticides and fertilizers (Dharmaraj & Vijayanand, 2018). Some use cases
are advanced detection of pest attacks and prediction of crop prices. India
is purely an agrarian economy where the agriculture sector has 49% of
India’s workforce, contributes 16% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product),
and provides food security to almost 1.3 billion people. India’s unsus-
tainable agricultural practices are reflected by land degradation, increased
dependence on inorganic fertilizers, reduced soil fertility, and rapid drop
of water tables. Fluctuation in agriculture growth, changes in monsoonal
rainfall, and inefficient markets cause income variability of farmers. Access
and availability of services in the agriculture chain is a challenge. Various
concerns are shown in Fig. 6.3.

Case Study
Microsoft developed a sowing app using AI in collaboration with
ICRISAT powered by Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite with Machine
Learning and Power BI. This app sends sowing advice to farmers on an
optimal day to sow. All they require is a phone which can receive text

Agri-commodity value chain in India

•Agricultural
2 •HarvesƟng and
4 •MarkeƟng &
6
Inputs - Seeds, •CulƟvaƟon Procurement •Storage Trading •Processing &
ferƟlizers, PracƟces Retailing
pesƟcides

1 3 5

Concerns and VulnerabiliƟes

AnƟquated PracƟces
FerƟlizer and Price discovery Weak Processing
vulnerable to Middle men leading Lack of capacity
pesƟcide imbalace mechanism not infrastructure
weather and climate to price asymmetry leading to price
leading to lower available to most leading to wastage
change aīecƟng and hoarding volaƟlity
producƟvity farmers and price volaƟlity
producƟvity

Fig. 6.3 Agri-commodity value chain in India (Source www.niti.gov.in)

 6 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT … 89

messages. The advisories have information like optimal sowing date, farm-
yard manure application, soil test-based fertilizer, seed treatment, and
sowing depth in 2017. The program reached more than 3000 farmers
across Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka during the Kharif crop season for
crops like ragi, maize, rice, and cotton. The app increased the yield from
10 to 30%.
Blue river technology is designed using computer vision and machine
learning technology, making farmers use herbicides by spraying only the
areas where weeds are present. This reduces the use of inputs for farming.
NITI Ayog and IBM developed a crop yield prediction model to
provide advice to farmers for Precision Farming. It improves crop produc-
tivity, soil yield, early warning on the pest, and agricultural control inputs.
It is implemented in 10 districts across the Indian states of Assam,
Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and
Rajasthan.

6.4 Education
AI can solve access issues and quality issues in the education sector
(Tewari, 2020). Some use cases enhance the learning experience using
personalized learning, automating administrative tasks, or recommending
vocational training. The education sector mainly faces the following
challenges.

• Multi-level classrooms: In small areas, it is not possible to have sepa-

rate classes for different grades. Teachers must handle heterogeneous
groups of children (different ages, abilities) in the same classroom.
• Lack of attention: Several factors like inadequate infrastructure in
the school, language barriers, significant learning gaps concerning
grades, family circumstances, poor health, and poor teachers may
lead children to the risk of dropout.
• Less adoption of technologies: This is due to a lack of teacher
training. According to a survey, 83% of teachers use computers just
to promote student practice.
90 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Case Study
Creating smart content: Content Technologies Inc. (CTI) is an AI
research and development company that creates customized educational
content. This technology uses deep learning to analyze existing materials
and textbooks and creates custom learning materials, including books,
chapter summaries, and multiple-choice tests.
Predicting dropouts: Andhra Pradesh government has tied up with
Microsoft to make particular efforts to lower the school dropout rate.
The application, powered by Azure machine learning, processed all the
students’ data based on gender, academic performance, teacher skills, and
school infrastructure to find predictive patterns. With these predictions,
education officials can help students who are most likely to dropout using
different programs and counseling sessions.
Write-to-learn: Pearson’s software uses natural language processing and
gives personalized feedback to students, hints, and tips to improve their
writing skills. Software rate essays and then provides suggestions for their
improvement. Used by teachers as essay grading becomes a less time-
consuming process. A teacher can spend more time teaching.

6.5 Mobility & Transportation

Various use cases are autonomous fleets for ride-sharing, predictive engine
maintenance, traffic management, autonomous delivery, etc. (Mathur &
Modani, 2016). Various issues faced by the transportation sector are as
follows.

• Congestion and road accidents: This sector is underdeveloped

and leads to an inefficient economy. The government shows the
following growth pattern of vehicles.
• High number of traffic deaths: According to the Ministry of Road
Transport and Highways (MORTH), the total number of road acci-
dents during 2015 was 501,423. This count keeps on increasing with
years, as the number of vehicles is rising, as visible in Fig. 6.4.

Case Study
From the last few years, most of the investments in AI have been made in
autonomous vehicles. Due to congestion and traffic conditions in India,
 6 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT … 91

180

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Fig. 6.4 Registered vehicles per 1000 population (Source www.niti.gov.in)

algorithms trained on India’s data have been robust. Error rates of object
classification fell from 28.5 to 2.5% since 2010. Therefore, India can use
present-day techniques in this sector.
Intelligent transportation system: System includes sensors, CCTV
cameras, speed recognition cameras, automatic number plate recognition
cameras, and stop line violation detection system can be used for toll
pricing and enforcing traffic regulations through smart ticketing.

6.6 Law Enforcement

Technologies used by law enforcement are facial recognition, speech
recognition, drones, and predictive analytics.

Case Study
Predictive Analytics: Researchers have worked in big data for processing
data to generate predictive policing models. National Crime Records
Bureau has worked with Advanced Data Research Institute (ADRIN) to
develop this technology. The system is used for crime mapping, analytics,
and the predictive system, which helps police officials with personal
digital assistants access the information at crime scenes, which reduces the
92 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

burden of filing reports. This software accesses data from Delhi’s police
dial 100 helpline and ISRO’s satellite imagery to locate hotspots using
clustering algorithms. This helps Delhi police to predict when and where
crime might occur. Currently, crime mapping is done every 15 days. Then
neighborhood analysis is done through algorithmic evaluation of geo-
spatial data. The proximity analysis is done, enabling the review of data
of criminals, witnesses, victims, and people near the crime location.
Speech and facial recognition: Punjab police, along with an AI
startup—Staqu, commissioned the Punjab Artificial Intelligence System
(PAIS), which loads criminal records and automates research using facial
recognition features. When an officer finds the suspect, he clicks the
picture; the picture is entered in the app, which compares this image with
stored images. This app then sends the suspect’s criminal background
within a few minutes to the officer’s phone.
Robo-Cops: In Hyderabad, H-Bots robotics invented a robot that
is still in progress that can handle law and order and enhance traffic
management. If implemented, it can maintain security at malls and
airports.

6.7 Defense
Defense: In defense, AI is used for intelligence, surveillance, robot
soldiers, risk terrain analysis, cybersecurity, and intelligent weapon systems
(Ray, 2018).

Case Study
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance: Indian army uses
autonomous vehicles to detect naval mines in waters and territorial
waters to detect adversaries. Rustom-2 can operate in both manual and
autonomous modes. The DRDO (Defence Research and Development
Organization) has made a robot known as Daksh, which can be used with
a robot range of 500 meters (DRDO Robotics, 2020).
Robot soldiers: The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
(CAIR) with DRDO has developed a Multi-Agent Robotics Framework
(MARF). It uses multi-layered AI architecture to create robots that can
work together as a team like real soldiers. Robots built are Wheeled robots
with Passive suspension, robot sentry, and snake robot.
 6 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT … 93

Risk terrain analysis/GIS: According to a report by Defence Research

and Development Organization, the applications include: (i) Military
Geospatial Information system which helps in generating terrain traffica-
bility maps (Going maps- GMs) using soil, slope, moisture, landform, and
land use which are then integrated; (ii) Terrain Feature extraction system
helps determine land use using multilayer perceptron training, which
generates multiple themes; (iii) Terrain Reasoner system which allows
decision-makers to find alternative routes for completing a mission; (iv)
Terrain Matching systems which integrate complex case-based reasoning
into a whole.
Intelligent Weapon systems: Defence Research and Development
Organization indicated that a Pilotless Target Aircraft (PTA), Lakshya-
II, was tested for many rounds. It is India’s first armed drone. It has a
precision of 20 meters and has completed nine flights successfully.
Eugenie, device failure detector: It generates alerts for a device failure
or its reducing efficiency. It helped to reduce the maintenance costs of
electronics and other devices. It is given equipment data for several years
and a strategy to use the data. It applies a digital transformation blueprint
to the data using IOT sensors. It helped the defense sector to transform
from preventive to predictive maintenance. It achieved more than 92%
accuracy.

6.8 Others
Andhra Pradesh’s government developed the Kaizala app with Microsoft.
It is used to crowdsource citizen feedback from social media accounts
and verifies the feedback by linking it to citizens’ mobile numbers. Infor-
mation is then processed using an automated Application Programming
Interface (API). It is also used to send automated messages to citizens.
For example, Microsoft reports that ration-shop owners are warned if they
have not distributed ration portions on time. The weather department
uses this messaging system to send warnings for the weather.
CamfyVision’s FacEAI_ PRO to enhance student’s safety and to detect
mishandling: CamfyVision provides solutions to ensure the safety of kids
by searching for kids missing from class, monitoring the premises of
the school, etc. This product works using AI, ML, Deep learning, and
computer vision techniques. CamfyVision has an automated children and
staff management system with real-time monitoring. It improves disci-
pline, quality of education and enhances the user experience, which helps
94 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

take India’s education system to the international level. It works as follows

if a kid is missing for more than 15 minutes, it alerts several times. And
if the child doesn’t return within 30 minutes, alerts are sent, so the
school authorities take that action. When the child boards and deboards
the school vehicle, parents, school safety staff are sent ‘entry and exit’
notifications.
Tara app to improve teachers’ English proficiency: If a teacher does not
have a good command of English, there will be poor learning outcomes
for the children. Children fail to understand the language, which leads
to poor performance. Learning matters’ Tara helps to increase teach-
ers’ vocabulary, which improves their communication skills. It works on
Amazon’s Echo dot, Google Home, and smartphones. It has four compo-
nents of learning—listening, speaking, reading, and writing (LSRW). Tara
mimics the user by listening, responding to the user’s utterances, giving
feedback, correcting the grammatical mistakes, and conversing with the
user repeatedly. It creates a non-judgmental environment so that learners
can speak confidently without any fear. In the start, an assessment is
taken to rate LSRW skills on a scale of 5, which is designed to show the
Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) guidelines. Assess-
ment is made after three months of starting the course and at the end of
the year, i.e., after six months. They are rated based on grammar, compre-
hension, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, and expression. A monthly
performance report is created every time.
Different sectors face different challenges, but all of them face some
common challenges.

• Lack of data: The key challenge faced is the unavailability of good

quality and domain-specific public datasets. Open Government Data
(OGD) platform supports available data of the Government of
India. There are more data sources, but the quality of data needs
to be improved. The issues faced are data unreliability, insufficient
standardization, and limited data.
• The low intensity of AI research in fundamental technologies.
• Evolution of core research into market applications.
• Low availability of AI expertise, workforce, and skills: The
researchers seem to prefer foreign universities, and even the under-
graduate students are interested in pursuing research outside India.
So, there is a lack of expertise in India.
 6 APPLICATIONS OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT … 95

• Computing infrastructure: Researchers require access to special-

ized hardware for research purposes. The unavailability of high-
performance systems limits the ability of the researchers.
• High resource costs.
• Low awareness for the adoption of AI in businesses: Many people
are unaware of the benefits of adopting AI in their businesses.
• Privacy, security, and ethical regulations are unclear.

The developing nations worldwide have similar use cases in various

sectors, and Indian datasets can provide a template for other countries
to test their model and applications (Chakrabarti & Sanyal, 2020).

References
Chakrabarti, R., & Sanyal, K. (2020). Towards a ‘responsible AI’: Can India
take the lead? South Asia Economic Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/139
1561420908728.
Dharmaraj, V., & Vijayanand, C. (2018). Artificial intelligence (AI) in agri-
culture. International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences,
7 (12), 2122–2128.
DRDO Robotics. (2020). Robotics, defence research & development organization.
Retrieved from https://www.drdo.gov.in/robotics on 15 June 2020.
Mahajan, A., Vaidya, T., Gupta, A., Rane, S., & Gupta, S. (2019). Artificial intel-
ligence in healthcare in developing nations: The beginning of a transformative
journey. Cancer Research, Statistics, and Treatment, 2(2), 182.
Mathur, S., & Modani, U. S. (2016, March). Smart City—A gateway for arti-
ficial intelligence in India. In 2016 IEEE Students’ Conference on Electrical,
Electronics and Computer Science (SCEECS) (pp. 1–3). IEEE.
Ray, T. (2018). Slow and steady: India’s tentative steps into the AI race. The
Diplomat, 14.
Tewari, A. (2020, July). Sustainable education in India through artificial intelli-
gence: Challenges and opportunities. In 12th ACM Conference on Web Science
Companion (pp. 41–47).
 CHAPTER 7

Potential Use Cases of Algorithmic

Government

Abstract This chapter presents various potential use cases that can be
developed in different domains, specifically for developing and under-
developed nations. Multiple codes for prototypes of use cases from this
chapter are presented for technology enthusiasts. The problem of fake
news in media, managing floods in disaster management, assessment
in the education system, the online admission process for schools and
colleges, loan fraud issues in finance industry, and online reputation
management are some of the use cases discussed in the chapter which can
be automated for the Government sector. Although these are the early
stages of algorithmic implementation in various regions, with the amount
of data increasing, governance can be made more robust and flexible.

Keywords Education · Media · Disaster management · Reputation

management · Finance industry

7.1 Media
The Problem of Fake News
Fake news depicts sensationalism, which presents misinformation or
hoaxes that spread through traditional media and popular online social

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 97

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5_7
98 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

media. The rapid increase in social media has changed the way of
acquiring information. More news is consumed through social media,
providing information timely and comprehensively on the events world-
wide. As compared to traditional communication (newspapers or televi-
sion), visualized info like images and videos explain better and attract
attention from the viewers or the readers. With misleading words, social
network users get easily affected by fake news, which leads to tremendous
effects on offline society. Reading a story on social media is becoming
easier and accessible, due to which fake news becomes a significant issue
for the public and the government. Fake news misleads readers and
spreads, which negatively affects or manipulates public events. Fake news
creates a lot of hurdles for the government at every level. During this
pandemic, authorities are found busy in clarifying people to protect them
from rumors.
The reasons for people switching from traditional to online news
consumption, i.e., advantages of online use of news are that it is less
expensive as compared to conventional media; requires less time than on
traditional media; and it is easy to share content in the form of videos,
blogs, or pots with other users or comment on social media. There is also
a disadvantage of social media, i.e., the quality of news on social media
is lower than the traditional news. As it is cheaper, faster, and easier to
provide news online, much fake news is produced for many reasons, such
as financial and political gain. This gives ease to publishers to publish their
articles in collaborative environments. People believe that the information
received from social media sites is reliable. It is analyzed that people are
unable to recognize deception, which affects the news ecosystem.
There are various psychological factors due to which people believe in
fake news: (i) social credibility, i.e., people think the source is credible
if others find the source if credible, especially when there is not enough
information about the source; (ii) frequency heuristic, i.e., people favor
information that they frequently hear even if it is fake. Many malicious
accounts on social media become sources of fake news. There are mainly
five types of fake news—first, Deliberate Misinformation, which is infor-
mation that is spread in a way to deceive target users. Second, Clickbait
grabs the user’s attention so that the user clicks on the fake news. Third,
Parody or Satirical articles use absurdity and exaggeration to comment
on events that unease the readers. Fourth, False headlines use to draw
the attention of the reader. The title may not match the context of the
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 99

article. This type is untrue and misleading. The fifth is Hoaxes, which
deceives the reader by causing harm and material loss to the user.

Why Fake News Spread Is a Concern?

The spread of fake news has a severe negative impact on society. Firstly,
fake news destroys the authenticity balance of the news ecosystem. For
example, it can be seen that fake news is more widely spread than popular
authentic news. Secondly, fake news makes people accept false beliefs.
Lastly, fake news changes how people interpret and respond to the real
story. For example, some fake news is created just to trigger people’s trust
and confuse them, hinder their ability to differentiate between what is
right and what is not valid. Fake news many times leads to communal
riots. For example, some lawbreakers spread a video a few years ago on
WhatsApp and other social media platforms, which lead to the enormous
communal violence that led to the destruction of belongings to different
communities.
The spread of fake news containing forged or misinterpreted images
can cause many adverse effects like manipulating important events. For
example, recently, there was a piece of fake news that depicted an entire
community of people as a disease source (COVID-19). A few people in
mid-March at a religious place in Delhi led to many positive cases in
India. Many fake videos depicted the group as ‘Corona Villains.’ A video
was spread that claimed some foreign country people intentionally licked
kitchen utensils to spread the novel coronavirus. The footage was fact-
checked, which proved that a group of humble people consumed food
from those utensils to ensure that no grain of food was left and wasted.
During this pandemic, authorities are found busy in clarifying people to
protect them from rumors.
According to a statistical report, 47% of the population acquires news
from online mediums like social media, and others receive from TV, news-
papers, and radio. The most trusted news source in 2018 was newspapers.
The primary source of news for people is an online search engine, and
45% of the population believes the story is accessed via search engines.
Top networks used to access reports are Facebook and WhatsApp by
52% of the community. 41.8% of fake news data in the election is due
to social media, which is higher than shares of both traditional mediums
(TV/radio/print) and online search engines.
100 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Therefore, it is essential to help reduce the adverse effects caused due

to fake news such that it benefits both the public and the news ecosystem.

How Algorithms Can Provide Solution

The steps performed in the implementation of Fake News Detection
are mainly data preprocessing, data visualization, feature extraction, and
applying models. The following are the steps.

1. Create a column ‘label’ in the data frame, which is our target

feature denoting whether the news is True or Fake.
2. Combine the columns ‘title,’ ‘text,’ and ‘subject’ into one feature
column called ‘article.’
3. Create the final data frame with only ‘article’ and ‘label’ features.
4. Start with data preprocessing, i.e., transform the raw data into a
useful and efficient format like removing null values, punctuation,
stop words, and then perform lemmatization.
5. Search for the null values and removing them from the data frame
if present.
6. Convert every word in the ‘article’ feature to lower case.
7. Remove the punctuation from the data, i.e., full stop, colon,
comma, brackets, etc.
8. Remove the stop words, i.e., useless words in the data like ‘a,’ ‘an,’
‘the,’ ‘in,’ etc.
9. Perform lemmatization, i.e., the process of grouping together
different forms of a word to its root form such that they can be
analyzed as a single item.
10. Then perform the data visualization, i.e., bar plots, pie charts, word
cloud, etc.
11. The next important step is feature extraction, i.e., attribute reduc-
tion in the dataset.
12. Create a bag of words (BOW), i.e., text (sentence or document)
is represented as a bag (multiset) of words, ignoring grammar but
keeps count of word occurrences.
13. Create TF–IDF (Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency)
vectorizer, i.e., mathematical statistic that reflects how important
a word is to a document and contains information on both more
essential and less important words. It converts the collection of
data into a matrix of TF–IDF features.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 101

Feature
Data Preprocessing Models
ExtracƟon

Remove Null values Naive Bayes

Bag of
Combine Ɵtle, subject, text to arƟcle Words LogisƟc
Regression

Random Forest
Convert data to lower case Classifier

StochasƟc
Remove PunctuaƟon Gradient
Descent

Passive
Remove stop words Aggressive
TF-IDF Classifier
vectorizer
K-Neighbors
LemmaƟzaƟon Classifier

Fig. 7.1 Block diagram representation of fake news detection architecture

(Source Author creation)

14. Then comes the final phase, which comprises of applying various
models like Passive-Aggressive Classifier, Naïve Bayes, Stochastic
Gradient Descent (SGD), Logistic Regression, Random Forest
Classifier, K-nearest neighbors classifier, etc.
15. Applying the classification model has initialized the model, trains
the classifier, predicts the target, and then finally evaluates the
classifier model.

The block diagram of the process is shown in Fig. 7.1.

Which Analytical Techniques Can Help?

The text classification problem requires to define three sets. First, is
training dataset D = {d1 , d2 , . . . , dn }, second is the class label C =
{c1 , c2 , . . . , cn } and last, is the test dataset T = {d1 , d2 , . . . , dn }. Each data
102 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

di of the training dataset is labeled with the class label ci from the class
label set C, and each data of the test dataset is unlabeled. The classifier’s
main aim is to construct a model from training data by relating features
to one of the target class labels. After the classification model is trained,
it can predict the class labels of test data. The formula for both training
and testing is given in Eq. 7.1 and 7.2.

f :D→C (7.1)

f (d) = c (7.2)

Preprocessing generally involves steps such as stop-word removal, punctu-

ation removal, lemmatization, etc. Feature extraction is a data representa-
tion process that includes several activities to scale down data complexity
and carry out the classification process in an accessible manner. It involves
the calculation of TF (Term Frequency) and IDF (Inverse Document
Frequency) from tokenized data. Finally, the data is normalized to unit
length to perform classification efficiently.
F. Sebastiani surveyed the different classifications and discussed the
specific role of machine learning algorithms in classification. Colas et al.
compared SVM’s performance with KNN and Naïve Bayes classification
algorithms on Reuters 21,570 dataset. The performance metrics were
calculated for each classifier. The overall performance of the SVM classi-
fier worked well. If the preprocessing and internal parameters are adjusted
well, then KNN and Naïve Bayes perform well too.
In logistic regression, the probabilities of the outcomes are modeled
using a logistic function. This model is designed mainly for classification
and helps understand the effect of independent variables on the depen-
dent or outcome variable. It works only when the predicted variable is
binary and assumes there are no missing values.
Naïve Bayes classifier is a probabilistic classifier that works well in real-
world situations like document classification and spam filtering. It requires
a small amount of training data to predict. This classifier is extremely fast
as compared to others. There are two variants: the Multivariate Bernoulli
model (B_NB) and Multinomial model (M_NB). Bernoulli works well on
binary data. The multinomial model works on frequencies of attributes
available in vector space representation of data.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 103

Stochastic Gradient Descent is an efficient and straightforward classifier

to fit linear models. It is helpful when the number of samples (data) is
large enough. It is sensitive to feature scaling.
K-nearest neighbors (KNN) is a lazy learning model, stores instances of
training data. Classification is done from a majority vote of k-nearest
neighbors at each point. It is simple to implement, robust to noisy
training data, and effective when the number of samples or data is large
but has high computation costs.
Random forest classifier fits the number of decision trees on subsam-
ples of datasets (size of subsamples is the same as original input sample
size; these samples are drawn with replacement) and uses an average to
improve the prediction accuracy. It is more accurate than a decision tree
and removes overfitting, but it is complex and challenging to implement
the algorithm.
Passive-Aggressive algorithm remains passive when the classification
outcome is correct but becomes aggressive when miscalculation (updating
and adjusting).
These classifiers’ efficiency is measured by performance metrics like
accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score, etc. The highest accuracy for the
dataset used in this book (Appendix A) is of Passive-Aggressive classifier,
which is 99.5%, and next is that of Stochastic Gradient Descent, which is
99.1%. Passive-Aggressive classifier has the highest F1 score. Therefore,
the classifier which can best fit the data is the Passive-Aggressive classi-
fier. The prototype code with algorithmic implementation is shown in
Appendix A.

Conclusion
The extensive spread of fake news has plenty of negative impacts on
society. The false news detection system can help mitigate the adverse
effects of fake news on both the community and the news ecosystem. The
solution can maintain the authenticity balance of the news ecosystem. It
can help people accept false beliefs and differentiate between what is right
and what is not. Fake news is not a problem; the rise of this fake news
on social media makes it sturdy and challenging. The rate of production
of counterfeit digital news is large and rapid. Thus it is challenging for
machine learning to detect fake news effectively. False news detection can
help to reduce misinformation risk and communal riots.
104 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Using fake news detection, alert systems can be created that can alert
users whether the news or the page is fake or not. Also, the alerts can be
sent to the media so that they can inform the public. Various detection
systems can be created as an extension of this. Also, intervention systems
can be designed that can intervene to offload the page if it is fake. Mali-
cious accounts containing false news can be removed so that the spread
is reduced. The primary source of the news can be determined, and that
source can be further blocked to stop the spread. Users with certain news
can be immunized rather than fake ones. It can help minimize the spread
scope and reduce fake news that created unnecessary tension in the polity.
It can reduce public chaos and censorship over the media. It is a tool that
can help editors and journalists to pace up the verification procedure for
the content that has been generated from social media. And the quality
of the news can be improved.

7.2 Disaster Management

The Problem of Floods as Natural Disaster
A country like India is a sub-continent located in the core of the
summer monsoon belt. India has many major river systems, such as
the Himalayan Indus Ganga Brahmaputra system and the peninsular
Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna, Kaveri on the east coast, and Narmada
and Tapi on the west coast. After Bangladesh, India is most prone
to floods. The most vulnerable states are the coastal regions which
are Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh, Orissa, and West Bengal. It receives more than 80% of rainfall
from June to September, during which most floods occur. India faces
floods almost every year with varying magnitudes. Tide is the most persis-
tent disaster. Floods are mainly caused by riverbanks’ low capacity to
control high flow bought down from the upper catchment caused due to
heavy rainfall. In coastal areas, floods are caused by cyclones or typhoons.
Flash floods occur in low lying areas near foothills. Some other causes of
floods are backing up water in tributaries at their outfalls in the main river
with landslides blocking the stream, resulting in backwater overflowing
riverbanks. The leading cause of the flood is heavy or excessive rainfall
that occurs mainly in monsoon months from July to September. Some-
times, floods are caused by Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), i.e.,
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 105

the surge which occurs when a dam consisting of a glacial lake fails to
work.
Heavy rainfall, low capacity of rivers to carry extreme flood discharge,
inadequate drainage to take away rainwater to streams or rivers, man-
made factors like failure of dams are the major causes of flood. Also, ice
jams or landslides blocking streams, backwater, debris flow, and cyclones
cause the flood. Floods occur almost every year in some parts of the
world or the other. Different regions have different climates or rainfall
patterns in a country. Some regions suffer devastating floods, and some
suffer drought. Due to varying rainfall, areas which are never prone to
floods traditionally also experience it. Geomorphological, extreme rain,
inflow, and outflow limits of sewerage also contribute to cascades. Indian
Summer Monsoon (ISM) has different phases, which are—onset (mid-
May to mid-July), peak rainfall (July to August), and withdrawal (mid-
September to mid-October). Also, the shift of heat source over Northern
India due to shifting of Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) gener-
ally stays between 20° and 30° North during peak rainfall months (July to
August). Their shifting affects the monsoon due to which heavy rainfall
occurs during this phase. Heavy rains are linked with heavy downpours,
low pressure, and monsoon breaks. In the Himalayas, low pressure,
Western Disturbances (WDs), and ISM lead to flood. For example, on
16–17 June 2013 Uttarakhand flood, GLOF from Mahatma Gandhi
Sagar due to glacier/melt and glacial moraines led to an increase in
overflow toward Kedarnath and downstream.
Deforestation also plays a vital role in the flooding equation. As trees
prevent runoff, lower the number of trees, more is the water flow, leading
to destruction. Therefore, the more is the forest cover, the lesser is the
risk of flood.

Why Flooding Is a Problem?

Floods cause loss to both life and the economy to a large extent.
According to Rashtriya Barh Ayog (National Commission on Floods),
India has a geographical area of 329 Million hectares, out of which 40
million hectares (one-eighth of total area) are prone to flood. Every year,
7.5 Million hectares of land are affected, 1600 lives are lost, and other
damages like crops, houses, and public utilities are of USD 250 Million.
The highest loss of lives was 11,316 in 1977. Flood causes fear and inse-
curity in the minds of people residing in floodplains. The aftereffects of
106 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

floods are suffering from people, the spread of some diseases, unavail-
ability of essential commodities and medicines, etc. High rainfall causes
a rise in water level, which leads to submergence of regions, landslides,
waterborne diseases, etc. Floods during the Rabi and Kharif seasons affect
the food security of India.
For example, on 16–17 June 2013, the Uttarakhand flood led to
massive destruction of life and land. Heavy rainfall caused flashflood in the
Kedarnath valley, Mandakini, and Saraswati rivers. Interaction between
West-Northwest moving monsoon, low pressure, and eastward-moving
mid-latitude WD leads to extreme rainfall. During the same time, a
monsoon low developed over the north Bay of Bengal and moved west-
northwest across northern India. Low pressure formed on the Gangetic
plain caused high moisture over the northwestern part of India.
Due to floods, salt in seawater contaminates land and reduces crop
yield, electricity supply cuts, increased traffic congestion, increased costs
of emergency services, loss of exports, etc.
To manage floods, the water level should be controlled, done by
dams/reservoirs storing floodwater, to be leveled without exceeding in
downstream. The lower the level of the dam, the lower is the risk of flood.
Another method is levees, which consist of earthen dams built between
rivers and the areas to be protected. When these methods fail, sandbags
or portable inflation tubes are used. Another technique is dike; it lowers
the risk of flood and protects land naturally underwater most of the time.
The weir is also constructed across the river to change its flow, which acts
as an obstruction for water flow.

How Can Algorithmic Solution Help?

A dataset with monthly rainfall amounts for each year from 1900 to 2015
for each state has the potential to explore the rainfall patterns, with which
a prototype has been developed shown in Appendix B. The basic approach
for the problem is that of a binary classification. Dataset also has the data
of the duration of 3 months. Using the dataset, first data preprocessing
is performed, like removing null values, which are zero in the dataset.
Next, the average rainfall for every ten days is calculated. This interme-
diate data is given as an input to the machine learning model, which
provides output labels as 0 or 1 (whether flood will occur or not). Next,
the model is trained depending on a threshold value of average rainfall in
the dataset. Giving the average data of 10 days to the model as input, the
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 107

model predicts whether there are chances of flooding or not by setting a

threshold value in the training data.
There is an official website of government called cwc.gov.in, which
updates itself regularly, telling whether an area’s water level is (i) normal
flood, i.e., the situation at any flood forecasting sites when the water level
of the river is below the warning level; (ii) above normal flood, i.e., if
the river’s water level at the flood forecasting site touches or crosses the
warning level but remains under the site’s danger level. This category is
assigned a yellow color; (iii) severe flood, i.e., if the river’s water level at
the forecasting site touches or crosses danger level but below the highest
flood level of forecasting. Orange color is assigned to this category; and
(iv) extreme flood, i.e., when the water level of river touches or crosses the
highest flood level recorded by any forecasting site so far. This category
is assigned a red color.

Which Analytical Techniques to Use?

The technique used for flood forecasting is logistic regression. This is
because the overall aim was to get 0 or 1 labels as output, i.e., binary
outcome, 0 for no severe risk of flood, and 1 for severe risk of flood.
Linear regression can also be used for binary outcomes. But if it is
used, it is possible to have fitted regression where predicted values for
some individuals are outside 0 or 1 range of probability. For a binary
outcome, logistic regression is used to model the log odds as a linear
combination of parameters and regressors. Logistic regression is the most
popular technique for classification and regression. It is used when prob-
abilities between the two classes are required. In linear regression, the
outcome can be any continuous value, making it difficult to classify,
whereas logistic gives only binary value that is biased and with low vari-
ance. Various research papers show how logistic regression is better than
linear regression for binary outcomes. V. V. Srinivas shows how fuzzy
means clustering can be worked upon for flood prediction. A. Mosavi
describes different machine learning models for flood prediction. Trace
Smith also reveals that logistic regression is better than random forest
classification for binary outcomes.
108 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Can There Be an Impact of Technology?

The approach can be used to identify whether an area may flood or not,
given the region’s rainfall data. The solution can be augmented with the
existing solutions of dividing an area into different zones based on the
severity of the floods or being used for alert predictors. If accessed, the
database can be used to send a red alert warning to mobile phones of
people living in the affected area using a free online text message sending
portal. The people in the affected area can migrate to some other area
so as for their protection. The government can take steps to protect the
animal species too. Early warning systems can help a lot. Lives can be
protected, and essential commodities can be collected at times by those
who cannot migrate. Automated demand predictions and supply chain
management can be done on the basis of flood predictions in advance.

7.3 Education & Assessment

The Problem of Transforming to Online Education
Online learning may have been on the rise in recent years. However, it
has become a necessity and a temporary substitute in many places, which
are still under extended lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As
education has undergone a tremendous transformation with the emerging
technologies enabling digital learning, a key aspect may be to explore the
potential of a segment that has not found large-scale adoption yet, i.e., the
virtual exams. Exams are a crucial component of any educational program
or a system, and online education programs are no exception. Given
any exam, there is a possibility of cheating, and therefore its detection
and prevention play a critical role. With several exams being postponed
or conducted amid immense health risks to students, remote proctoring
systems can enable them to take exams in the safety of their homes.
What adds to this is, with AI-based invigilation technologies ensuring
that they do not cheat or indulge in unfair means during the assessment,
educational institutions can also benefit from this arrangement. The most
critical factor among faculty and student concerns are student privacy and
increasing test anxiety via a sense of being surveilled. Some experts might
also argue that the whole premise of asking students to recall information
under pressure without access to their course materials is flawed.
Online human monitoring is a common approach for proctoring online
exams. Still, the main downside is that it is very costly in requiring
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 109

many employees to monitor the test takers. With AI being able to tackle
the offline model’s challenges, especially amid such crucial times, it can
prove to be a gamechanger and prepare students and educators for the
post-pandemic world. Online exam conduction with AI-based proctoring
can significantly reduce the human efforts and efficiently conduct the
examinations online and proper monitoring of any suspicious actions or
movements of the students. The main goal is to develop a proctoring
system and eliminate the need for human proctors, reducing the cost,
time, and the chances of any human errors in detecting any suspicious
activities. The AI-based proctoring system is a real-time system that can
completely manage the conduction of exams, from verifying the student’s
identity to notice any unnecessary movements and generating warnings
till the end of the exam.
The conduction of exams through an online mode and using AI-
based systems used for proctoring would be an emerging trend, which
can be quickly adopted in the times of a pandemic like COVID-19.
This advancement in technology can prove to be a boon to any country
throughout the world and to any institution or body, which cannot follow
the traditional trend of taking the exams physically. Cutting the labor
costs would prove to be technological advancement with higher relia-
bility and accuracy than the conventional method of taking exams. While
the challenge could be of the prerequisites for implementing this new
advancement, of the laptop and a good internet connection, but once
met, it can be of immense importance to certify or test any student taking
an exam for his/her skills.

Importance of Online Assessments

Online learning is growing at a rapid rate. Due to lockdown and health
crisis in the current situation, it is the need for the hour to build a
system that makes our education system up and running. Online Exam
conducting using AI proctoring system has become so comfortable using
this. It is such an efficient and cost-effective way to conduct exams.
Since assessments are a crucial component of any education system, it
is necessary to conduct exams, and AI proctoring system can help to
continue the exam process. The main concern when conducting online
exams is whether the exams will be done without cheating and moni-
toring students. So, to solve this problem, the AI proctoring system keeps
the camera switched on, and using artificial intelligence, each student can
110 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

be controlled individually. Moreover, to add functionality to this system,

the system can give warnings, and after a specific number of warnings, the
artificial proctor will cancel out the exam.
This system provides easy management for the institutions and reduces
human error and effort. The labor cost is reduced using this remote
AI proctor. AI proctor will itself see any suspicious activity and raise
a warning on such a situation. AI proctor will minimize human error,
and continuous monitoring of each student is not possible with phys-
ical invigilators’ help, but AI proctor manages and handles them with
ease. AI proctoring is a scalable solution and can be implemented at
various stages and a variety of platforms. AI proctoring system has been a
technological boom to the education system, with such advancements in
technology. This is very useful for the education system’s future, which is
to set up its foot in the online education system. This solution helps those
scenarios where the individual cannot reach the destination of the exam
center. Using AI proctoring technology, students can give their exams
online sitting at their home. Institutions need not worry about cheating
or suspicious stuff as the system itself will manage that. This system is a
convenient way to conduct exams in such a health crisis where leaving
homes will jeopardize thousands of lives. Seeing the current situation
and analyzing the fact that conducting exams is a necessity AI proctoring
system seems to be the most feasible and reliable solution.
Understanding the health and education AI proctoring system’s
concern bridges the gap between the two without compromising with
anyone of them. This solution could result in a drastic and better change
in the future. This system can set up an example for future how online
exams can be conducted and changes that are required for the better-
ment of this system. Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence provide
a platform to build such a scalable solution for this complex problem. AI
proctoring system will reduce the cheating and analyze the marks accord-
ingly based on the evaluation. The candidates capable of qualifying will
only qualify using the AI proctor.

Algorithmic Solution to Proctoring

The AI proctoring system is built to solve remotely conducting exams,
such as health crises, and managing those exams free from any cheating
and continuous monitoring.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 111

The examination problem to conduct at remote places online was

a challenge. This system performs the exam remotely and online and
ensures there are the least chances of the candidate using fraud methods
to pass an exam.
Figure 7.2 shows the AI proctoring system overview, which starts using
object detection, counting the number of persons, and tracking eyes and
mouth to avoid cheating. If the mouth is opened, alerts are displayed on
the screen, and analysis is done using the behavior of fraud of the candi-
date. Detect the eyes, mouth, and face of the person giving the exam. AI
proctoring system tracks the movement of eyes, mouth, and face simulta-
neously. Using the analysis of the face’s parts, one can raise a warning for
suspicious activity.
Figure 7.3 displays the face detection algorithm and overview of the
prototype solution present in Appendix C. YOLO face detection first
detects the persons given a frame of the image and find whether there
is any person in the image or not. The probability of the face is calcu-
lated, and using anchor boxes, the person’s face will be outlined using
a rectangular table. It then calculates if any other person is there in the
frame. Using a sliding window algorithm, it then alerts the screen more
than one person detected and displays an alert.
The algorithm, after detecting the face, now captures the points on the
eyes and mouth, as per the given process in Fig. 7.4. Using those points
on the eyes, it analyzes the movement of the eyes’ pupil. It displays the
eye’s position wherever it moves, i.e., either left, right, or upwards if it
detects any suspicious movement of the eye.

Fig. 7.2 Flow diagram Object

of AI proctoring DetecƟon
solution (Source Author
creation)
Real Time
Face DetecƟon
Tracking

Analysis and MoƟon

Display alerts. Tracking
112 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

DetecƟng Anchor Detect

Yolo face Display
probabilty boxes on number of
detecƟon alerts
of a person detected faces

Fig. 7.3 Face detection YOLO algorithm (Source Author creation)

Mouth tracking Detect the

Motion tracking Display alerts
and eyes tracking movement

Fig. 7.4 Motion tracking of eyes and mouth (Source Author creation)

Next up, it captures the position of the mouth. The data points
obtained during face detection, the aspects of the mouth are analyzed.
If the mouth is open to a certain threshold, it displays that the person
has opened mouth, indicating the person talking to someone, saying this
message on the screen, and sending an alert.
Analysis and display of alerts: The algorithm detects the person’s face
and tracks the eyes and mouth. After all the detection and recognition,
the alerts must be displayed. So, any suspicious activity including more
than one person on screen or detection of remote or mobile phone on
the screen, movement of eyes where the eyes move will be captured, and
alerts will be displayed on the screen in real-time. If the person opens
his/her mouth, the message is displayed as a proctor finds this as a way
of cheating. The statement above is displayed on the screen.
The solution presented for conducting exams is a model that is ready
to use in real-time environments while facing all the challenges that are
offered toward it. It is robust to handle such situations.

Analytical Techniques for AI Proctoring

Object Detection: The principal technique used in the AI proctoring
system is object detection and recognition. Object detection plays an
important role when it comes to analyzing real-time data. An Online
AI proctor needs to detect a person’s identity; it needs object detection.
It should ensure that human is only giving the test and not any robot.
Secondly, it must provide the status of the person passing an exam. Object
detection includes this. It must also detect any object that is brought
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 113

during the exam, which is not allowed. For example, a mobile phone,
earphones, and other such devices are not permitted during the exams.
Object detection, for the solution in this book, seemed to work well. The
reason behind selecting such a technique was to ensure the person’s real
identity and use of any suspicious object that is not allowed during exam-
inations. Object detection algorithm can detect many other things in the
image in real-time that can be counted as suspicious.
Face Detection: This technique plays a significant role in detecting
faces and the number of persons in the screen frame. As AI proctoring
system uses the camera of the course being used, it must recognize that
remotely some other person is not helping the candidate. So, our model
needed to detect the number of persons. For the face detection algorithm,
we used the YOLO algorithm. Using this, we counted the number of
faces shown on the image, and a warning is indicated if more than a single
person is detected in the camera. The face detection algorithm technique
was our choice to discover the number of faces given a frame quickly. In
face detection, we noticed two parts of the face—eyes and mouth. The
discovery of the pupil of the eyes will tell whether the individual is looking
on the screen or somewhere else. The mouth part detection will help in
finding whether he opened his mouth for saying something or not. If
the algorithm detects whether the person is opening his/her mouth, the
algorithm will display a message on the screen. Using the detection of
eyes and mouth, we can make sure that the person is not involved in any
suspicious activity or cheating.
Object Tracking: this technique helps in measuring and tracking the
objects we detected earlier. The eye-tracking or pupil tracking will track
the area where the pupil of eyes moved, and accordingly, the proctor will
display a message on the screen whether the individual is looking toward
the left-right, bottom, or up. Next up for tracking, we use mouth tracking
and lips tracking. If the lips are apart from each other, the tracking algo-
rithm tells if the person is speaking or not. That can be used to verify if
the person is involved in cheating. Object tracking algorithm helps detect
and analyze the candidate’s cheating behavior, and that can be used in
the marking scheme. We chose object tracking as this is the best way to
solve our problem and conduct exams remotely.
114 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Impact of AI Proctoring on Online Education

With this lockdown period growth of online education is quite a trend.
So, conducting online exams is quite a challenging task. The solution
above is going to have a considerable impact on the education system.
The online conduction of exams based on the AI proctoring system is
both beneficial and efficient. Building such a model is advantageous and
robust as well. AI proctoring system can replace physical teachers, and
cheating can be reduced to minimal. The quality of education will tend
to improve as those students who are capable will qualify.
This system can detect the number of persons given a frame. If a person
uses a cell phone, it will see that, and if a person is looking somewhere else
apart from the screen, it will display the message and alert accordingly.
There is a significant variation in proctored and physical conduction of
exams. It is challenging for a single teacher to look at all students, while
this problem is easily solved using the proctor. The AI proctor will auto-
matically recognize the person’s identity. There is a chance of fraud in the
case of physical exams. The AI proctor system will also have a mechanism
to detect the person’s voice, whether he is saying something or not. If
the students are cheating, their behavior can be observed, and marks can
be given accordingly. With less labor cost, this will be a tremendous tech-
nological advancement with higher accuracy, reliability, and adaptive than
traditional conduction of exams. This system is built to reduce human
error and save time. AI proctoring system will cut short the human error,
and the detection of any suspicious activity is more likely to be caught
by this rather than a physical teacher. Also, in this health crisis, where the
need of the hour is to conduct exams remotely, AI proctoring system is
the most viable and reliable solution. This system also allows the insti-
tutions to benefit from removing AI proctoring and disallowing students
to engage or indulge in unfair means to pass the exams. Also, the online
proctoring through AI can automatically scan and verify the student’s
identity, and if it doesn’t match, he/she will not be eligible to give the
exam. The system can also monitor competitive exams for those students
who need to travel across cities for exams. This system can be helpful in
these situations.
AI proctoring system can be a boon to the education system at a
minimal cost. During exams, we hear about cheating news on media.
Using AI proctoring system, these will be reduced. Also, in this health
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 115

crisis, where the need of the hour to conduct exams remotely, AI proc-
toring system is the most viable and reliable source. AI proctoring in
the education department will play a significant role shortly, and it can
remove the traditional approach of conducting exams. Due to any situa-
tion, the students cannot reach their destined locations for exams can give
their exams online remotely. This AI proctoring system later can replace
competitive exams where students need to travel cities to pass exams
using the AI proctoring system; they can easily give exams sitting at their
home. So, AI proctoring system will prove to be significant technological
advancement in the education system.

7.4 Entrance Exams and Admissions

Problem of Admissions to Educational Institutions
University education has become a necessary part of people’s preparation
for working life. Admission to the university is an important issue. How
the student must choose the university and how the university must select
a student on so many applicants. The success of both sides is determined
through education. The students’ enrollment has increased in past years,
which leads to more applications, more paperwork, and processing chal-
lenges. Every applicant’s forms are routed through different departments
for evaluation and manual processing, which causes difficulty in the admis-
sion process. In today’s time, despite technological advancement still, the
admission process at college or school admission is being carried out
manually, which is very time-consuming. An automated student admis-
sion system’s development is the best solution to speed up and simplify
the admission process and remove manual processing. The development
of science and technology has immensely contributed to the growth of the
internet, which has increased the need to develop an automated student
admission process. The problems associated with the current system are
that they publish multiple merit lists, leading to double work for the
university executive and even for applicants to visit again to check the
list. The manual admission process leads to the high cost of the appli-
cation process because the colleges’ paperwork and admission fees are
high. Even for the institute, they have to do all the manual work of
handling the papers. With the advancement in technology, the process
of admission can be done in an automated way by taking the data from
previous year students, which are given admission to train a model that
116 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

can predict new applicants’ selection possibility. It will be beneficial for

both the applicants and university admission cell to provide a better
deserving candidate admission into the university program. This model
will increase the process and accuracy to select the applicant. Before the
entrance, every university considers a general aptitude; it can be GMAT,
GRE, CAT, GATE, and others, but all these exams are conducted at
centers to have a check on the identity of the person who has appeared for
the exam. There are problems associated with this procedure. Every year
millions of students give entrance test which leads to rush at the exam
center and even on the roads many times leads to traffic jam because of
this, students sometimes reach late, and they can’t appear for the test and
miss the opportunity. To make this process completely automated, we can
conduct the exams at home for students.

Requirement of the Online Entrance Process

In today’s world, the number of students who go for higher education has
gradually increased. Based on data analysis from the UNESCO Institute
of Statistics 2016, more than 300,000 Indian students have been gone
out for higher studies. There is an annual growth rate of 22% in 16 years.
The shift in trend for higher education has led to so many applications
every year to the universities, making it difficult for them to decide which
requests should be granted admission. This has become a major problem
nowadays and till now the decision is taken by the admission cell on the
manual basis which is time-consuming. Let’s look at the traditional admis-
sion method that was informing the students and applicants was done by
putting up the notices on notice board and advertisements in the news-
paper. The application form was a hard copy style where physically you
have to go to the university to submit, and then evaluation is being carried
out by the staff. With advancements in technology, the application form
gets turned into a digital way, but the assessment is still done manually.
The problem statement has brought a new change from paperwork to
digital format, standing in a queue, and submitting the application form
to submit the form online with just one click of a button. There is a
need for a shift in the admission process for graduate education. Techno-
logical advancement can help to solve the problem of manual evaluation
of each applicant’s form. According to the report Artificial Intelligence
Market in the US Education Sector, AI will grow at a compound annual
rate of 47.7 percent from 2018 to 2022. AI has the potential to change
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 117

how the admission process of domestic and international students can

be changed by creating algorithms and models to predict the most likely
applicant to be selected. Machine learning, the subset of AI, helps the
computers analyze and learn from the university data, which factors are
essential for admission. According to the Enrolment Management Report,
AI can change the entry for small and prominent universities in both the
public and private sectors.

Algorithmic Solution
With the advancement in technology, now, we can automate the whole
process of admission through machines. From the entrance exam conduc-
tion to the result generation, document verification, and admission
selection, all can be done with a machine’s help. The solution which is
used to automate the entrance exam process is that while the applicant
submits his identity card details, we can use face verification to check the
identity of the person who is sitting in front of the computer to check that
same applicant is giving the exam, or there is some cheating happening so
we can easily terminate the exam of such faulty applicants. As shown in
Fig. 7.5, the block diagram depicts the applicant’s real-time face verifica-
tion at the time of giving the entrance test. The prototype code is shown
in Appendix D.
After the entrance exam, the selected applicants apply for the document
submission process. In the letter of recommendation, we can use senti-
mental analysis using natural language processing techniques to quickly
get to know about positive or negative results about the person based on
the advice given in the letter. The block diagram, as shown in Fig. 7.6,
depicts the working of sentimental analysis.
After passing through the document verification stage, we can feed the
data to the system to evaluate that the applicant has the chance of getting
selected or not. Admission officers have a rich dataset of information of
the past applicants, including the decision. Using this data, we employ
supervised machine learning techniques to classify applicants.
For the classification problem, the information which has been taken
is shown in Table 7.1. The dataset attributes will be pre-processed, and
the missing values and outliers will be checked. After that, we will pass
on the dataset to the classification models to train the model, and testing
data will help verify the accuracy of the model. The classification model
block diagram is shown in Fig. 7.7.
118 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Real-Time image Face Detection Face

through a webcam Normalization

Feature
Extraction

Image from Feature

identity card / Matching
Database

Identity
Validation

Fig. 7.5 Face verification block diagram (Source Author creation)

Analytical Techniques Used for Solution

Artificial Neural Network: Artificial neural networks (ANN) mimic the
human body system’s biological brain. They are modeled after biological
neurons, learn by the training given to them. The structure of ANN has
three components input layer, hidden layer, and output layer. We use acti-
vation functions to convert the weighted sum of a neuron’s input signals
into the output signal. In ANN, we use two methods, feedforward, and
backpropagation, to tune the desired output model. In feed-forward, the
input layer sends the input values to the hidden layer, which processes the
signals and sends them to the output layer through an activation function.
In the backpropagation method of supervised learning, the difference
between desired and output result is measured. Then, the weights’ values
are modified to obtain the nearest possible output value compared to the
desired result.
Figure 7.8 shows the structure of ANN where we have taken all the
variable from dataset, i.e., age, board, 12th%, GRE score, CGPA, and
others as input variables. They are then passed on to the hidden layer
using the sigmoid activation function, which is used in a binary classifica-
tion where small change occurs in x, resulting in a large change in y. The
 Collection of data
7

Training data Data filtering and pre- Text conversion

processing to lowercase
Removing
punctuations
Removing stop
Sentimental analyser
words
classifier

Test data Evaluation stage

Fig. 7.6 Sentiment analysis block diagram (Source Author creation)

POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT
119
120 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Table 7.1 Dataset

Variable name Description Category
attributes considered for
Prototyping Age Age of applicant Quantitative
Board CBSE/ISCE/State Categorical
12th % Percentage in 12th Quantitative
class
GRE score GRE marks Quantitative
Category Gen/OBC/ST/SC Categorical
SOP Statement of purpose Quantitative
LOR Letter of Quantitative
recommendation
CGPA Undergraduate Quantitative
CGPA
Research Research experience Quantitative
Chances of admit Chances of admission Quantitative
(0–1)

function is defined as shown in Eq. 7.3

1
S(x) = (7.3)
1 + e(−x)

After the hidden layer processing, the result is sent to the output layer.
Logistic Regression: Logistic regression is a popular technique used
in classification problems because it results in a value between 0 and 1.
On the other hand, linear regression results can be positive or negative
in cost, which cannot distinguish between an applicant’s application for
higher education to be accepted or rejected, so we use logistic regression
as the first method in most cases. The admission decision function is as
follows.

Admission prediction = f (GRE score, Research experience, 12th %,

and other variables)

Decision Tree: A decision tree is a supervised machine learning algo-

rithm used for classification problems. The decision tree comprises several
branches, root nodes, and leaf nodes. It generated a tree-like structure by
splitting the data according to specified parameters. Feature selection is
based on the most significant information gain of features, and then the
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 121

Problem
statement

Identify the data required

Checking Data collection

missing values
Outlier Visualizing the categorical
detection and data and Numerical data
Exploratory data analysis
removal with the target variable.
Label
encoding
Data pre-processing

Test data SPLIT Training data

ANN Random
Forest

Logistic Decision
Regression Tree

Compare accuracy

Model evaluation

Result

Fig. 7.7 Classification analysis block diagram (Source Author creation)

iterative process repeats itself until it reaches the leaves. In our case, we
have a feature like age, GRE score, 12th percentage, LOR, and other
variables according to which the decision tree is formed. The root node
contains the element with the most significant information gain of them
122 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Age

H1

Board

12 % H2 Output

.
.
.
H3

CGPA

INPUT LAYER HIDDEN LAYER OUTPUT LAYER

Fig. 7.8 ANN block diagram (Source Author creation)

all. According to the problem statement, let’s see an example of a decision

tree, as shown in Fig. 7.9.
In Fig. 7.9, an example illustrating the decision tree for a candidate’s
admission prediction is shown. If a candidate has a CGPA of above 9.0,
and either has done some research work or is having a GRE score of
more than 320, has more chances of getting selected for admission to the
university.
Random Forest: Random forest classification belongs to a supervised
learning algorithm, an ensemble learning method for classification that
operates by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time and
outputting the class that is the mode of the categories or means prediction
of the individual trees. It smoothes the error which exists in a single tree,
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 123

Fig. 7.9 Decision tree block diagram (Source Author creation)

and it increases the overall performance and accuracy of the model and
provides explainable scores. The random forest provides us with an intu-
itive way to look at our features by listing individual feature importance,
which gives us the importance of each factor affecting the loan approval.
As compared with the decision tree, random forest works very fast, accu-
rate, and robust. It can be used for both classifications and the regression
problem

Impact of Algorithmic Solution

The automated entrance exams and admission process will positively affect
the system because the current system of manual exams and admission
process is very hectic, time-consuming, and includes paperwork. With
the automation of the whole process from entrance exams to admission,
we can eliminate all the current system’s disadvantages. The solution will
change the entire process of admission process in the higher education
system. In the entrance exams, instead of going to the exam centers,
we can automate the exams, and students can give them while sitting at
home. It will save the applicant’s travel cost who will be traveling from a
remote area to appear for the exam at the center. We can make a big bank
of question pool through this process so that there will be no chances
of cheating. With the microphone and webcam on, we can keep a check
on the applicant. The face verification model will continuously track the
124 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

applicants’ face to know that there is no cheating happening while giving

the exam. With the auto-grade procedure, we will save the applicant and
the university’s time because the result will be given to the applicants
within few hours, and then they can move to the next stage of the admis-
sion process. Even in the job aptitude exams, we can use these automated
entrance exams, and the applicant can easily give it from their home.
At the time of document identification and submission of papers, we
can easily use the natural language processing model to evaluate them. In
the letter of recommendation (LOR), which is submitted by the applicant
for higher education, we can assess the message by sentimental analysis
technique. We can rate the student’s feedback as positive or negative,
which is considered an essential factor at the time of evaluation of an
applicant because it tells about the applicant’s personality and past work
history. With such an admission system, the applicant can have a real-time
check on the status of his/her application to a university. After all, the data
from documents are verified and collected is stored in the database.
With the help of supervised classification learning, we can evaluate the
applicant’s data. This will help the admission officers quickly and accu-
rately judge a student’s application without any manual evaluation done
by a human. The classification model will easily predict the chances of an
individual in the university. This will make the workload of the admis-
sion cell lighter and more accurate. This automated system will create a
positive impression on students and engage the students with clear and
transparent information in students’ selection. It will help to select the
best talent from the pool of applicants. Students prefer to interact via the
website and mobile devices with the hyper-growth of digital technologies,
which increases student satisfaction.

7.5 Funding & Loans

The Problem of Loan Frauds
In the banking industry, the distribution of loans is the core business of
every bank. The central bank’s asset directly came from the profit earned
from loan distribution by the bank. The prime objective in the banking
industry is to invest its assets into safe hands. Banks and financial compa-
nies approve a loan after the validation and verification process, but still,
there is no guarantee that the selected applicant is a deserving applicant
or not. Due to insufficient credit history, many people face loan rejection.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 125

These people are students or unemployed adults because they do not have
enough knowledge to justify their credibility. For example, an employed
adult has an income source, which turns out to be a significant factor in
repayment of the loan. There are many factors like real estate, marriage,
city of residence, and others, which play a credit score history for loan
approval.
In today’s world, the banks struggle to gain the upper hand over each
other to enhance their business. Retaining customers and fraud detection
are the two critical goals in the banks. There are many risks for the bank,
as well as those who get the loan. Stake in the bank involves credit risk,
i.e., the loan won’t be returned in time or at all, the interest rate may
be too low that the bank won’t be able to earn adequate money. Risk
management is widely used in the banking sector, and the executives need
to know the credibility of the customer they are dealing with. Offering
the customer’s credit card or loan is always a risky job.
With the advancement in technology, the banks focus on the automa-
tion process of fraud detection in the loan approval or credit card. Manual
processing of the loan lacks consistency and accuracy; above all, it is time-
consuming. Automation in loan approval processing facilitates faster and
more accurate loan applications, which make the whole process seem less
dreadful, faster, and more reliable. More rapid loan processing is always a
competitive advantage for them. The availability of a vast amount of data
helps the banks to enhance their loan lending operation by implementing
the loan lending prediction. The bank’s historic data plays a crucial role in
training the model to predict loan approval. The loan prediction is helpful
for the banks and applicants because the main goal is to provide the loan
to the right applicant as fast as possible. The loan prediction system helps
the executives directly jump to a specific application without wasting time
on other apps, and it can be checked on a priority basis. The close moni-
toring of why one applicant’s loan was approved and others were rejected
such data is beneficial to the customers and the banks.

Importance of Detecting Fraudulent

Credit scoring is a process of evaluation before the credit score is sanc-
tioned. This process is called credit evaluation, which concludes the
approval or rejection. Credit scoring plays a vital role in evaluating the
applicant’s loan approval or denial in the banking sector. There are 5C’s
involved in the process in credit evaluation, which are character, credit
126 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

report, capacity, cash flow, and collateral. A person who sounds financially
stable is likely granted a loan very quickly. Credit history is another critical
feature to approve the credit application. The credit report includes the
person’s past transactions, borrowing, and other functions. If the person
has a good cash flow, then the chances of getting credit approval are much
higher.
As per a study, more than 50% of the first-time loan applicants get
rejected from the banks and financial institutions because the existing
predicting system works on credit scores and paperwork. Due to the
high demand and the reliability of the banks and financial institutions on
loan lending, there is a demand for further improvement of the credit
scoring model. As per the study conducted by the National Business
Research Institute and Narrative Science, around 32% of financial service
providers in the country have already begun using AI tech. As the world
is changing, the model for evaluating the credit score has to changes. In
India, 80% of the population doesn’t have a credit score, which leads to
the rejection of the loan approval request. If, with the help of Artificial
Intelligence, we can build creditworthiness, it will open a big business
portal for the banks and financial institutes. Nowadays, fintech companies
are taking the data from the person’s transaction, like how much he/she
spends on food, travel, clothing, and more. All this data can be used to
create a person’s creditworthiness rather than relying on old factors like
credit history and credit score.
The importance of the existing problem in the banking sector helps
find new fields in the world to make the current system more robust and
refined. As discussed earlier new system will open large business portals
for the banking sector. From the expert’s point of view, the AI can help
lenders, banks, and financial institutions to reach over 300 million new
first-time loan applicants, which will boost the economy. According to a
report by the Boston Consulting Group, the use of AI in loan assessment
can help digital lending to grow to USD 100 Billion business by 2023 in
India.

Algorithmic Approach
The above problem statement can be solved using the machine learning
methodology. We can use the bank’s historical data from the loan applica-
tions and all the documents attached to the application for loan approval.
The process of loan evaluation is a sequence of steps taken to grant
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 127

Fig. 7.10 Process Business Understanding

diagram for loans &
funding (Source Author
creation) Data Gathering & Understanding

Data Filtering

Searching Model

System Evaluation

the loan to the right applicant. The proposed model for the problem
statement is shown in Fig. 7.10.
Business Understanding: The initial phase focuses on understanding
the project objective and the required business perspective forms. In the
banking sector, we need knowledge about the loan approval process,
essential documents required, criteria on which decision is made for the
approval and rejection.
Data Gathering & Understanding: The process of gathering the data
depends on the problem statement we can choose for the real-time data or
collecting the data from various files or databases. There are free datasets
available on the website, like Kaggle and machine learning repositories.
The data understanding phase focuses on familiarizing data, identifying
the relation of features with the target value, and getting to know more
about the data. Generally, we apply an 80:20 split to the data for the
training and testing process, respectively. A collection of data from the
bank sector has been selected for the prototype shown in Appendix E.
Table 7.2 indicates the name of attributes, description, and category
which are used to train the model.
Data Filtering: The bank dataset attributes are filtered, and the relevant
attributes needed for prediction are selected. The process of cleaning the
raw data is termed data preprocessing. The handling of missing values,
outliers, and human errors is corrected before passing the model’s inputs.
The preprocessing is done because noisy data leads to inconsistency.
Handling noisy data improves the efficiency of the algorithm.
128 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Table 7.2 Dataset attributes for the Prototyping

Variable name Description Category

Loan ID Unique loan ID Qualitative

Age Age of the applicant Qualitative
Gender Male/Female Categorical
Married Marital status Categorical
Dependents Number of dependents Qualitative
Education qualification Graduate/Not graduate Categorical
Housing Own/Free/Rent Categorical
Self employed Yes/No Categorical
Credit card Applicant credit card (0/1) Qualitative
Existing client Applicant is an existing client (0/1) Qualitative
Applicant income Income Qualitative
Co-applicant income Income Qualitative
Payment delay Is there any payment delay (0/1) Qualitative
Average house spend Household spend monthly Qualitative
Existing loan Is there any existing loan (0/1) Qualitative
Average travel Traveling expense Qualitative
Present account balance Account balance Qualitative
Minimum balance Minimum balance in 6 months Qualitative
Loan amount Amount Qualitative
Loan amount term Term of the loan in months Qualitative
Credit history credit history meets guidelines Qualitative
Property area Urban/Semi-urban/Rural Categorical
Loan status Loan approved (Y/N) Categorical

Searching Model: Our main goal is to train the best-performing model

using the filtered data. In our case, we have the target variable, that
applicant should get loan approval or rejection based on the model’s
input features. We will use the classification problem because we want
the output to be true or false, yes or no. The most commonly used clas-
sification algorithms are K-nearest neighbor, logistic regression, decision
tree, and random forest.
System Evaluation: The best-performing models are evaluated during
the model development process, finding the best-performing model on
the filtered data. Then we apply that model to the test data to check the
performance.
The block diagram for the solution is shown in Fig. 7.11.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 129

Problem Statement

In dataset, there are

13 existing features
Identify the required data
10 addition feature
Handling has been added
Missing
Values
Outlier Data collection
detection and
removal
Label Visualizing the
encoding categorical data and
Exploratory Data Analysis
categorical Numerical data with
data the target variable.

Data Pre-Processing

SPLIT

Training Data

XGBoost
Feature
Importance

Feature selection
Test Data

Random
Logistic
Forest
Regression

XGBoost Decision
classifier Tree

Compare Accuracy

Evaluation of test data

Fig. 7.11 Block diagram for loans & funding (Source Author creation)
130 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Techniques Used for Algorithmic Solution

Logistic Regression: Logistic regression technique is the most popular
statistical technique in the financial sector world, especially for the credit
risk assessment or loan approval prediction. As compared to linear regres-
sion, it overcomes multiple issues, such as in linear regression, and we can
get a negative or positive output, which is not possible in probability. In
contrast, logistic regression provides a continuous range of values between
0 and 1. We can assume that the likelihood of loan approval follows the
logistic distribution; it follows the function of loan approval, which is
written as follows.

Loan approval = f (credit history, applicant Income, Education

qualification, Employment status, and other dummy variables)

Where the Loan approval decision is 1, and the rejection is 0.

In logistic regression, to map the predicted values to probability, the
sigmoid function is used to map them. The sigmoid function is shown in
Eq. 7.4
1
f (x) = (7.4)
1 + e(−x)

In the case of a classification problem, it is a great model to try as the first

step because it outputs conditional probability value; however, we find
predicted value in regression.
Decision Tree: A decision tree is a supervised machine learning algo-
rithm used for classification problems. The banking industry is widely
used for credit risk assessment as the decision tree comprises several
branches, root nodes, and leaf nodes. It generated a tree-like structure
by splitting the data according to specific parameters. Feature selection is
based on the most significant information gain of features, and then the
iterative process repeats itself until it reaches the leaves. An example of a
decision tree is depicted in Fig. 7.12 related to the banks and financial
institutions’ loan approval process.
In the decision tree, there is a set of rules which are trained using the
training data. It ignores the irrelevant features which are not required.
Figure 7.12 shows that if an applicant who applies for the loan applica-
tion has an excellent credit rating gets a loan approval very quickly. The
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 131

Fig. 7.12 Decision tree structure (Source Author creation)

decision tree model is suitable for small and straightforward datasets as it

is easy to interpret the tree. Still, when the data gets more complicated,
its accuracy decreases and gets challenging to interpret.
Random Forest: Random forest classification belongs to a supervised
learning algorithm, an ensemble learning method for classification that
operates by constructing a multitude of decision trees at training time and
outputting the class that is the mode of the categories or means predic-
tion of the individual trees. It smoothes the error which exists in a single
tree, and it increases the overall performance and accuracy of the model
and provides explainable scores. The random forest provides us with an
intuitive way to look at our features by listing individual feature impor-
tance, which gives us the importance of each factor affecting the loan
approval. As compared with the decision tree, random forest works very
fast, accurate, and robust, and it can work on large datasets and deal with
the unbalanced dataset. It can be used for both classifications and the
regression problem.
XGBoost: XGBoost stands for extreme gradient boosting is a scalable
and highly efficient boosting system. It is an ensemble of decision trees
algorithm where trees are added until no further improvements can be
made to the model. The benefit of using XGBoost is that it helps deter-
mine the critical feature in the dataset and helps to evaluate the model
on them for better results. It provides a score that indicates how useful a
feature is in the construction of the model. In the solution, we have used
XGBoost for feature selection and classification.
132 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

Impact of Algorithmic Solution

Automation in the loan approval processing has distinct advantages over
the existing system. In a week, banks and financial institutions received
thousands of loan applications, and only a few percentages of them are
approved. But with automated loan approval processing gives the ability
to quickly evaluate the thousands of applications and find the right appli-
cants that meet the credibility criteria. Replacing the manual steps with
automation and transferring the paperwork to a digital platform leads
to a better user experience and improve the speed and accuracy of loan
approval. As per the Federal Reserve survey in 2016, half of the applicants
complained about the difficulty during the application process and the
time taken to receive the credit decision. An automated lending system
can dramatically change this perception by simplifying and accelerating
the credit decision’s entire operation. The digitalization of documents
will make automation in the loan approval process quick because all the
required information will be collected in no time and transferred to the
system for the decision evaluation.
In today’s auto credit lending market, a faster credit decision is a
competitive advantage for both banks and financial institutions. Suppose
a small bank has a much quick and automated decision system for loan
approval. In that case, the applicants applying for the loan are much more
satisfied, which helps the bank retain its customer, which is the bank’s
main objective, and the bank provided stiff competition to the others.
Automation in the banking sector will optimize all the operations.
Most of the banks already have automated banking services, and
automating the core services like loan approval will be another step in
the industry. All the operations will be done online, producing more
clear data, and enhancing the loan approval process model. Even the loan
process’s management visibility can easily be seen by the applicant, which
makes it fairer to know the rejection of the application.
The automation process will reduce loan processing cost as the bank
companies do not have to spend the money on training the employees
for service loans. Even the automation process will save the time of the
executive as time is money in every industry. The decrease in the paper-
work will be an added advantage to companies’ cost reduction in handling
the paperwork, manually entering the customers’ financial information to
remove the paperwork from the process of credit lending.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 133

7.6 Online Reputation Management

The Problem of Online Reviews for Government
Many Governments across the world are trying to move closer to their
citizens to achieve transparency and engagement. In recent years, there
has been growing interest in mining the online sentiment to predict how a
decision made by the Government is taken by the public, either positively
or negatively. The explosion of social media is opening new opportunities
to help the Government achieve it. People are continuously using social
media daily to communicate and express their opinions about various
subjects, products, and services. It has emerged as a precious resource for
text mining and sentiment analysis. Social media communications include
Facebook, Twitter, etc. Twitter is one of the most widely used social
media sites used by citizens. In this use case, an attempt has been made to
analyze the citizen sentiment in social media such as Twitter. Primary data
was collected through Twitter API. An approach to a real-world problem
and how Government agencies can benefit from it as described in this
section.
A measure of the customer’s attitude toward the aspects of a service or
product which they describe in text or a computational study of opin-
ions and emotions is called the sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis
is in demand nowadays because of its efficiency and ability to analyze
even huge texts in minutes. The task of analyzing the sentiments typi-
cally involves taking a piece of writing, which can be either a sentence,
a comment, or an entire document, and returning a ‘score,’ which is
a measure of how positive, negative, or neutral the text is. This helps
evaluate the Government’s performance from the people’s perspective
instead of making people’s surveys, which might be expensive and time-
consuming. Sentiment analysis is also known as opinion mining, and
subjectivity analysis determines the attitude or polarity of opinions given
by humans for a particular scheme. Polarity is the quantification of senti-
ments with a negative or positive value. Sentiment analysis can be applied
to any textual form of opinions such as reviews, blogs, and Microblogs.
Microblogs are small text messages such as tweets or a short message
with a limitation of 160 characters. In previous years, Twitter has gained
more and more popularity and is used as a microblogging website. The
messages in Twitter, or tweets, are a way to publicly share and express a
defined group of users’ interests. With the limitation of the tweets’ size,
it has challenged the users to express their emotions in one or two key
134 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

lines or sentences, and hence, it gives a fair reflection of what is happening

across the country and the world.
The complete process of identifying and extracting the subjective data
from the available raw data is called sentiment analysis. Natural language
processing, which describes the relationship between human language and
machine, tries to narrow down the gap between humans and machines by
extracting useful information from the natural language messages. In this
case-study, the extraction of the sentiments from the tweets is studied.

Importance of Online Sentiments

Sentiment analysis is a technique to discover knowledge with the help
of data mining. Also known as opinion mining, this can be applied to
unstructured data sources and can cover various information on various
topics related to politics and government. According to an estimate, 80%
of the data is unstructured or unorganized. A considerable volume of data
is in documents, emails, media conversations articles, and surveys created
every day, which is very hard to analyze computationally very time-
consuming. Sentiment analysis helps by tagging the unstructured data
and sorting data. Sentiment analysis is considered a beneficial approach
in predicting the current trends, interpreting the nation’s reaction and
nerve. Opinions of people can be evaluated, and suggestions can be imple-
mented. The workflow of governance with sentiment analysis can result
in better and efficient use of power and energy in the correct direction.
Sentiment analysis can identify critical issues and that too in real-time.
Sentiment analysis helps government sites identify the reactions and senti-
ments of people on a program or policy created by them for the welfare
of the citizens. Different government sites can analyze the response of
the public on their strategy and work for the betterment. In 2013 US
presidential elections sentiment analysis was used. Governments can use
the data from the social media platforms to analyze for predicting and
the opinion of the common public. News media has always been using
sentiment analysis to predict trends. The project of the government,
whether it was successful or not, is analyzed using sentiment analysis.
Opinion polls of the Indian elections of 2019 were predicted using major
news media platforms’ sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis on the above
problem helps the governments prioritize work per the demands of the
citizens and channelize the workflow of the government that puts the
needs and services of the citizens rather than the governments themselves.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 135

Extracting data and analyzing the reactions and based on the responses,
the policies can be modified and created, keeping the citizens’ view and
opinion first.
Sentiment analysis is in trend already and is being used by most govern-
ments around the world to build a citizen-centric governance model. It
is sensed to be quite a popular tool for the governments to analyze their
policies and the workflow in which they work. In the coming decade,
governments will have a tremendous amount of involvement from its citi-
zens. Governments and citizens will work together in sync with the help
of sentiment analysis. Governments can set up a criterion for its policy to
pass or fail based on the review of the country’s people. The new welfare
programs for the citizens and what they require next can be analyzed, and
based on that, knowledge gained can bring up new plans that cover up
the needs and necessities of the people around the country. Governments
will get a clear view of how people look forward to their policies and
programs.

Algorithmic Solution
The approach used for solving the sentiment analysis problem that has
been adopted for the prototype shown in Appendix F is presented in
Fig. 7.13 and described below.

1. Data collection: The first step of sentiment analysis includes

collecting data from blogs, social networks, and forums. The data
is first scrapped from the official Government site. Based on the
scraped information, the tweets from Twitter are extracted and
saved into a CSV file. The data collected is unorganized and
in different languages; therefore, text classification and natural
language processing are used to extract and classify the data.
2. Data Preprocessing: The data preprocessing step comprises cleaning
the noisy and incomplete data. The irrelevant and non-textual

Data Data Pre- Sentiment Sentiment Sentiment Analysis of

Collection processing Detection Polarity Classification Tweets

Fig. 7.13 Sentiment analysis approach (Source Author creation)

136 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

content are identified and eliminated before analyzing the data. The
preprocessing for the sentiment analysis includes the following tasks.
• Removing the URLs, punctuation, special characters, etc.
• Removing the Stopwords.
• Removing Retweets.
• Stemming.
• Tokenization.
3. Sentiment detection: Sentiment detection is a fundamental work in
various sentiment analysis and opinion mining applications, such
as tweets mining and tweet classification. The extracted sentences
of the reviews and opinions are examined, and the sentences with
subjective expressions such as opinions, beliefs, or views are retained.
Sentences with external communication like facts or factual infor-
mation are discarded. The words for the sentiment words can be
classified into positive, negative, and neutral words.
4. Sentiment polarity: TextBlob is a Python library for processing
textual data. TextBlob provides an API for diving into stan-
dard natural language processing (NLP) tasks such as part-of-
speech tagging, sentiment analysis, classification, translation. Here,
TextBlob is used for calculating the polarity as well as classifying
into sentiments. Polarity is a float value within the range [−1.0 to
1.0] where 0 depicts neutral, +1 depicts a very positive sentiment,
and −1 represents a negative sentiment. Subjectivity is a float value
within the range [0.0 to 1.0] where 0.0 is hugely objective, and 1.0
is exceptionally subjective. The subjective sentence expresses some
personal feelings, views, beliefs, opinions, allegations, desires, and
beliefs, whereas objective sentences are factual.
5. Sentiment classification: based on the previous step’s polarity,
subjective sentences are classified in positive, negative, good, bad,
like-dislike, but classification can be made by using multiple points.
The sentiments derived from the sentences can be divided into three
categories, as shown in Fig. 7.14.
6. Analysis of tweets: The main objective of performing sentiment anal-
ysis is to convert unstructured text into meaningful information. So,
the analysis of results is vital to decide by the government. In the
case of government schemes announced by the central government,
if more tweets result is positive, then people support that particular
scheme. Analysis can be used to take feedback on specific plans with
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 137

Fig. 7.14 Sentiment

Neutral
classification (Source
Author creation)

Sentiment

Negative Positive

appropriate discussions in public and decide for proper implemen-

tation of government schemes. This can also be visually plotted on
graphs like a pie chart, bar chart, and line graphs. When the analysis
is finished, the results are displayed with the percentage of positive,
negative, or neutral tweets.

Analytical Techniques for Sentiments

The solution to this problem requires the application of a few of the
following analytical techniques.

1. Web Scraping: Web scraping is also known as web data extrac-

tion. It refers to the process of retrieving or ‘scraping’ data from
a website. Unlike the regular operation of manually extracting data,
web scraping makes use of intelligent automation to retrieve data
points from the internet. It is a technique used to pull large amounts
of data from websites whereby the data is extracted and saved to
a local file on a computer or PC. Web scraping can be used for
sentiment analysis to obtain the data from any Government site or
organization. First, the web scraper will be given one or more URLs
to load the page before scraping. The scraper would then load the
entire HTML code for the page. In this project, web scraping has
been used to extract the data from the official Government website,
mygov.in. The scraper would either remove all the data on the page.
The views of the people are obtained from the discussion forum on
138 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

a particular topic. Lastly, the scrapper would output all the data it
has extracted from the website.
2. Natural Language Processing and Information extraction: After
web scraping the data from the Government site, natural language
processing was applied to get the most frequent words and extract
the Twitter data related to the most frequently occurring word.
The information was then stored in a CSV file. Natural language
processing libraries were used for the preprocessing of the text.
The data collected from the government websites was used to
find out the frequent word discussed and accordingly found the
tweets for Twitter and analyzing those tweets for sentiment anal-
ysis. The tweets selected were preprocessed using a natural language
processing tool kit, and different sentiments were analyzed. We used
the natural language processing technique as this is best suited for
the preprocessing of the text data and was feasible for our problem
statement.
3. Text analysis and classification: After applying the Natural language
processing techniques and preprocessing the data, removing
the URLs, hashtags, usernames, lemmatization, stemming, etc.
TextBlob was used to calculate the polarity of sentiments and clas-
sify them into positive (if the polarity is greater than 0), negative (if
the polarity is less than 0), or neutral views. TextBlob is based upon
Pattern Analyzer and Naïve Bayes Analyzer. The columns for the
calculated polarity and the classification of sentiments were added.
For classification of the tweets and labeling them as positive and
negative is done using classification techniques. TextBlob has an
inbuilt library for classifying sentiments using the subjectivity and
polarity of the text. Using that sentiment analysis of TextBlob, it
is much easier to scale tweets and classify them according to the
problem statement.
4. Visualizing the results: After the classification of sentiments, the
percentage of the total number of positive, negative, or neutral
tweets is calculated individually. These tweets can be visualized easily
using matplotlib and pyplot libraries. Visualizing the results is much
easy to analyze and depict what is happening in the entire code.
 7 POTENTIAL USE CASES OF ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENT 139

Impact of the Algorithmic Solution

In today’s world, governments are moving toward citizen-centric gover-
nance where the priorities are services driven by the citizens instead of
the government. Today analyzing and getting into the nerves of common
people is the new form of governance. Every government wants to know
the impact or the reaction of the citizens on any new policy or act or
decision. Governments today wish to take the people’s opinions and get
to the real perspective of the country’s people so, if they could analyze
the citizens’ reaction and further work more to improve the decision or
law that could help a government stay in power and understand the real
situation and work upon that.
This is the age of social media. Hashtags, mentions, and whatnot
today’s generation express themselves quite well on social media, so the
best form of opinions reactions and suggestions can be gathered from
that public sourced data. Governments have realized that social media is
an excellent vehicle for getting closer to the citizens. The solution above
will have a massive impact on the way governance will change to citizen-
centric administration. This model will help the government understand
the citizens, how they think, and how they can make changes to better the
country and society. The above solution will take the discussions from the
government sites initiated by ordinary people. The most common word
on the discussion form will be selected and searched for on the social
media platform and will analyze accordingly how citizens feel about that
policy, law, or decision made by the government. Sentiment analysis is a
useful tool for the governments and can help determine whether a partic-
ular program initiated by them was successful or a complete failure. This
solution’s impact is that this will create a bridge between the government
and the citizens’ opinion. With the help of sentiment analysis, govern-
ments can reprioritize their policies and reallocate their funds on how
citizens can gain from those funds. All this sentiment analysis activity can
be done at a minimal cost while also getting the common people’s trends
and reactions. Measuring the customer’s attitude toward the aspects of a
service or product described in the text or a computational study of opin-
ions and emotions can help the government. Governments can study the
sentiments and accordingly modify or make changes in the policies and
laws. This type of sentiment analysis on the public’s views can be used
to segregate different sections of society. It can be used to predict the
average percentage of supporters of the government. Harsh comments
140 R. GUPTA AND S. K. PAL

can be directly eliminated to maintain the balance between the senti-

ments and get accurate results. The repeated Retweets by a person can
be removed so that accuracy is calculated based on all the persons’ views
and not affected very much by a single person.
Although these are the early stages of this in the future with the
amount of data increasing and getting such a massive volume of opin-
ions and suggestions can make the governance more robust and flexible
at the same time. Citizens never were so crucial in the country’s progress,
but this will help in betterment due to the sentiment analysis. People can
openly express and judge the government’s initiatives, and the govern-
ment can make the necessary changes required as per the demands of the
people.

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 Appendix A: Python Code for Use
Case 1---Media

Prototyping

Fake News Detection can be implemented using python as shown in the code below.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 143
license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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 Appendix B: Python Code for Use
Case 2---Disaster Management

Prototyping

Flood Prediction can be implemented using Python as shown in the code below.

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license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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Case 3---Education & Assessment

Prototype

Online Exam Conduction using AI proctor can be implemented using Python as shown in the code below.

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license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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 Appendix D: Python Code for Use
Case 4---Entrance Exams & Admissions

Prototyping

Exams and Admissions can be implemented using Python as shown in the code below.

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license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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 Appendix E: Python Code for Use
Case 5---Funding & Loans
Prototyping

Fraud Prediction can be implemented using Python as shown in the code below.

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license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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 Appendix F: Python Code for Use
Case 6---Online Reputation
Management

Prototyping

Public Sentiment analysis using social media can be implemented using Python as shown in the code
below.

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 Index

A Autonomous friendly system, 20

Aadhar, 6 Autonomous systems, 10
Agriculture, 13, 72, 73, 79, 88
#AIforALL, 13, 84
AI Governance model, 21, 22 B
ethical layer, 21 Biasness, 28, 65
social layer, 21 Big Data, 2, 8, 9, 19, 20, 23, 38, 46,
47, 64, 91
technical layer, 21
Blockchain, 2, 42–44
AI Mayoral candidate, 73
AI proctoring, 109–115
Algorithmic accountability, 33 C
Algorithmic Decision Systems (ADS), CamfyVision, 93
23 Cloud computing, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53
Algorithmic Governance, 11, 32, 33, Community health workers (CHW), 4
43, 48, 49 Conversational pattern, 11
Algorithmic Government (AG), 1, 2,
4, 13, 18–30, 51, 53, 78, 80
Artificial Intelligence (AI), 2, 4, D
9–13, 19, 21–23, 25, 27–29, Daksh, 92
32, 37–41, 50, 57–66, 70–81, Data Lakes, 48, 49
83–90, 92–95, 108–110, 112, Deep learning (DL), 11, 41, 42, 90,
114, 116, 117, 126 93
Audit of Algorithmic Government, 29 Defense, 74, 75, 81, 92, 93
Augmented Reality (AR), 44–46, 74 Digital Adoption Index, 5–7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 197
license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. Gupta and S. K. Pal, Introduction to Algorithmic Government,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0282-5
198 INDEX

Digital farming, 72, 73 L

Digital Government, 60 Lakshya-II, 93
Digital Twin, 49, 50 Lawbots, 73
Disaster management, 104 Law enforcement, 91
Layered Model of Governance, 21, 22
Licensed system, 20
E
Loan Fraud detection, 124
Edge computing, 50, 51
Education, 4, 40, 45, 60, 70, 75, 89,
90, 93, 94, 108–110, 114–116,
M
120, 123, 124, 128, 130
Machine learning (ML), 2, 10, 11,
Education & assessment, 108, 109
40–42, 61, 63, 74, 75, 87–90,
E-Estonia, 78
93, 102, 103, 106, 107, 110,
Ethics of Algorithmic Government, 29
117, 120, 126, 127, 130
Eugenie, 93
Media, 8, 45, 46, 48, 60, 63, 93,
97–99, 103, 104, 114, 133, 134,
F 139
Fake News detection, 100, 101, 104 Military surveillance, 74
Flood predictions, 107, 108 Mobile computing, 51
Fog-of-Things (FoT), 53 Mobility & Transportation, 13, 90
Funding & Loans, 124, 127, 129

N
G
National Crime Records Bureau, 91
Goal-driven systems, 11
Natural language processing (NLP),
Granular computing, 52, 53
58, 61, 63, 80, 84, 90, 117, 124,
134–136, 138
H Niti Aayog, 12, 13, 43, 79, 81, 87
H-Bots, 92
Healthcare, 4, 9, 12, 13, 40, 49, 50,
75, 76, 85–87 O
Hyper-personalization, 9 Online admissions, 116
Online entrance examination, 116
Online Reputation Management, 133
I
Open Government Data (OGD), 94
International Transport Forum (ITF),
Out-of-control systems, 21
11
Internet-of-Things (IoT), 2, 8, 39,
49–51, 53, 72
P
Patterns & anomalies, 11
K Permission-less innovation, 59
Kaizala app, 93 Postal services, USA, 70, 71
 INDEX 199

Predictive analytics, 81, 91 Social Credit Systems, 73

Preemptive approach, 59
Primary Health Cares (PHC), 4
Punjab Artificial Intelligence System T
(PAIS), 92 Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), 87
Technology-based decisions, 5, 74,
75, 77, 78
R Trust-based systems, 20
Recognition pattern, 11
Regulations of Algorithmic
U
Government, 18
US federal agency, 71
Reviews management, 133
Robo soldiers, 92
V
Virtual Reality (VR), 44–46
S
Scoping, Mapping, Artifact Collec-
tion, Testing, and Reflection Z
(SMACTR), 29 Zarsky classification, 20, 21, 26
Sentiment analysis, 8, 119, 133–140 Zero road accidents, 77