AI Bright Spot: Developing Data Insights with AI at the U.S. Census Bureau

The Partnership for Public Service AI Center for Government® is publishing a series of blogs to celebrate how artificial intelligence and intelligent automation are being used in government to serve the public.

We spoke with AI Government Leadership Program alumna Erika Becker-Medina, senior leader for statistical information product development and use at the U.S. Census Bureau about how AI is making an impact in this data-heavy agency.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How is your team at the U.S. Census Bureau thinking about potential AI solutions? Can you tell us about the pilot project you are working on?

“My leadership sits at the intersection of statistical information and stakeholder engagement. One challenge I’ve seen, for many years across the different programs I’ve worked in and long before we were thinking about AI adoption, is that [the U.S. Census Bureau] receives thousands of signals through stakeholder engagement. We gather user feedback through our website, public engagement, conferences and correspondence. What we lack is a systematic approach to synthesizing these signals.

“I was so motivated through the AI Government Leadership Program to find a path forward to address this problem and explore how we could leverage AI to capture and synthesize these signals in a systematic way—to go from engagement activity to engagement intelligence. In doing so, AI can help transform engagement signals into actionable insights that strengthen leadership understanding of evolving user needs and help inform statistical strategy. Using AI in this way can help identify emerging data gaps and needs that may be difficult to detect manually across large volumes of engagement information.

“At the Census Bureau, we take privacy and confidentiality very seriously, so from the very beginning of this exploratory stage, we’ve worked closely with our policy and governance teams to understand those constraints and work within them. We’re starting small with a use case focused on Ask Census.gov inquiries, which allows us to explore the concept within our privacy and governance framework. It has been important to engage both technical and non-technical experts from across the Census Bureau in this pilot because we want to ensure the insights are meaningful, actionable and worth pursuing before considering broader implementation.

“I’ve been presenting this across the bureau, which has been so important to get buy-in from cross-functional expertise and from leadership.”

What will it look like when this data synthesis tool is fully operational?

“The end goal is to better understand evolving user needs by analyzing engagement signals and transforming them into actionable insights that can inform our statistical strategy at the Census Bureau. The end goal is not to have AI completely step in and make decisions, but rather to have AI provide decision support for leadership.”

Well before the recent large-scale development and adoption of AI, the Census Bureau staff worked with large and complex amounts of data. Given that background, how are folks at Census prepared and trained to use these tools?

“I think there are multiple responses to this, but at the end of the day, we’re predominantly a large group of data nerds. Long before I joined the AI Government Leadership Program, there was an AI machine learning interest group at the Census Bureau that had grown organically. So, there’s one set of people who are tech-forward or very data-savvy and who are naturally inclined to experiment with the latest technologies. I also think you have some people who are either apprehensive or might feel intimidated by the use of AI.

“What’s been great is that we had mandatory AI training that everyone had to do through Census and [the Department of] Commerce. I think having strong governance frameworks in place, as well as this training, creates an opportunity to engage with these tools across the spectrum of technical and non-technical experts.

“One thing I would point out is our mission hasn’t changed. We’ve always strived to do things in the most efficient way. What’s changed is the tools that we now have at our disposal. Having AI tools at our fingertips empowers people to experiment and see how they can work faster and smarter.”

Whose work in AI inspires you?

“In terms of other agencies, I was really inspired by what we saw from the Library of Congress. I appreciated their emphasis on using AI to enhance workflows and improve public access to information while ensuring humans remain in the loop to preserve accountability, authenticity and public trust. The reason it left an impact on me is because it was a chance to see government approaching AI in a thoughtful, responsible manner while still remaining mission focused. Those are the types of examples that I enjoy seeing because we’re in this public sector space and that balance of innovation with governance is so tricky.”

Thank you for sharing your work with us, Erika!

---

Continuing the conversation

The AI Center for Government champions AI innovators across all levels of government. If your agency is taking steps to lead AI well, we’d love to hear from you. Join us as we highlight real-world AI use cases and convene public sector leaders from across the country to share tools and insights to lead confidently in the age of AI.

We’re here to help!

• Sign up for our newsletter.
• Follow us on LinkedIn.
• Get in touch! Email us at [email protected].