Azure OpenAI Service Comes to Azure Government.

Microsoft is a technological powerhouse, pumping out new innovations for businesses across the world each year. Last year, Microsoft had a larger market focus on AI advancement through Copilot. This year, that AI focus shifts to the government sector with Azure OpenAI. Capable of driving innovation and growth for mission critical workloads, Azure OpenAI is set to change the way government agencies manage their operations.

Azure OpenAI enables businesses to apply generative AI to many different use cases such as conversational AI, content creation, data grounding, and more. Azure OpenAI Services enables agencies with strict security and compliance regulations to use the latest generative AI solutions at the unclassified level. Microsoft is soon going to submit Azure OpenAI Service for FedRAMP High authorization from the Joint Authorization Board (JAB). It will also be submitted for authorization for the Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level (IL) 4 and 5. In the next few months, you can expect AI capabilities for even higher classification levels to follow.

Azure OpenAI is joining the existing AI platform of services available to government entities, including Azure AI Services, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure AI Search. All of these encompass Azure Government, which is Microsoft’s combined effort to bring Azure AI to every sector of the government.

Azure OpenAI Service coming to Azure Government is a big deal. Generative AI is can enable agencies to streamline complex processes and automate repetitive work, just like how Copilot is able to simplify workflows for businesses through Office 365. This frees your time up to focus on more the outcome of your projects and how those affect future workflow than the actual workflow itself. Azure OpenAI Service is a flexible solution that, when coupled with other AI Platform services, can boost any service or role across the organization. Generative AI stands to make such a big difference in the government space due to:

Improved Productivity

Azure OpenAI Service reduces the time it takes to complete tasks, freeing your team up to focus on higher value projects. Agencies typically spend a good chunk of time and resources to create Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for contracting government services. Generative AI can look over past examples of RFPs and other related documents, then create an editable first draft RFP to cut down on the writing and creation time. Non-contracting professionals won’t require as much time being trained and can be brought up to speed faster to help with the editing process, while those that would normally have created these documents can simply edit the document and move forward.

Another instance could be using generative AI to simplify case management by helping case workers manage heavy caseloads with AI insights, freeing up their time so they can focus on constituents.

Enhanced Cognition

You can interact with your AI on knowledge and information to boost personnel capabilities. Knowledge hub creation can be done with the help of surface-level insights from generative AI, giving teams more time to track down information across the organization using natural language questions. Essentially, the AI learns as you ask it questions and offer queries, learning from previous experiences and expanding its reach to help you faster and with a deeper knowledge base. This in turn allows you to find better information to feed the AI, which will continue to grow its cognitive abilities.

You can use real-time insights from different data sources to identify delivery service issues for constituents. An agency can use generative AI on large public data sets like social media and search engines to determine emerging trends or sentiments over certain topics, which in turn helps you make decisions and take actions accordingly.

Accelerated Discovery

Generative AI can understand and simulate complex situations and processes, leading to new discoveries. Since government agencies are trying to address legacy applications more and more, investing in the creation of modernized applications that are usable and secure is of the greatest importance. Azure OpenAI can be trained to recognize patterns and anomalies in code that can then be sent for human review. Agencies that deal with financial fraud will have a new tool that can detect vulnerabilities in systems, allowing them to be sealed before outside entities can get in.

Agency personnel can now easily access and integrate the latest Azure OpenAI Service into their workflow, using their data to make it more specialized to their roles and goals.

Now that Azure OpenAI Service is in Azure Government, your existing data can be used to further benefit your agenda. Azure government users can request access to experiment and evaluate the impact of generative AI across multiple scenarios to see where it would best fit in and how fast it would provide an ROI. Agencies can also learn which workloads don’t fit this adoption model and where the easiest integrations lie. Agencies using Azure for their data and AI applications will be moving faster than ever, especially as new advancements in AI services, tools, and capabilities become available in the cloud.

Similarly, keeping data safe is a core aspect of Azure OpenAI Service. Prompts and proprietary data can’t be used to further train the model, keeping classified information out of the algorithm. Even though Azure OpenAI Service uses in-house data that is allowed by the agency, inputs and outcomes are not made available to anyone but you, Microsoft included. Embeddings and trainings are not available to other customers, to OpenAI or model training, to improve anything connected to Microsoft, or to fine-tune Azure OpenAI models for your use unless you choose to do so.

Microsoft is committed to transforming government entities through generative AI. From simplifying the creation process to solidifying compliance and reducing risk, Azure OpenAI Service is set to make a big impact on government entities across the industry, with more advanced AI capabilities across classification levels to come in the near future.