HelloGov: Empowering Federal Agencies to Harness the Clout of AI

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In February 2019, Former U.S. President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13859 on the American AI Initiative, setting up the United States’ national strategy on artificial intelligence and laying emphasis on implementing AI more widely within the federal government. And now, even under President Biden’s administration, the vision has continued progress as government agencies are seen heavily applying AI and ML to a wide range of their applications. The most recent instance is of May 2021, where the new AI.gov website was launched with an aim to broaden the federal government’s access to AI innovation efforts.

But despite this wider push for AI, many federal agencies are still struggling to employ AI on a larger scale. The reason? The federal government decision makers often take a backseat when it comes to implementing AI/ML-led transformational changes. This is where companies like HelloGov® are charting new territory to empower federal agencies with AI-enabled products that drive nationwide transformation. HelloGov is the nation’s first full-stack federal AI company with federated deep learning architecture that facilitates them to build, train, and deploy best-in-class AI/ML products.

In an exclusive interview with CIO Applications, Shami Khalili, Partner at HelloGov, and Tommy Cresine, the company’s Chief Technology Officer share their insights on his company’s role in helping federal agencies unleash the potential of AI. They also shed light on HelloGov’s unique federal AI solutions and consulting services, leveraging the clout of which the company has worked with numerous federal agencies, automating their manufacturing, cyber, energy, space, and logistics projects.

1.Please provide us with a brief overview of your company.

HelloGov is leading the movement to democratize AI/ML for the public sector. We believe in open, transparent, and secure ML to make it easier, faster, and more cost-effective to deliver expert data science and ML as a force multiplier. Our mission is to build the nation’s leading federal AI/ML company while standardizing the public sector’s access to leading-edge technologies. We are making this possible through secure rapid product development and our in-house full-stack AI-as-a-Service Platform, leveraging which we are able to solve some of the mission-critical challenges within days’ notice instead of the years taken many top-notch technology companies.

When it comes to our offerings, our unique federal AI solutions range from data labeling and modeling to customized AI-enabled software and consulting services. On that note, our flagship product Carnegie Studio™ is the fastest DoD and HIPAA compliant, self service data annotation/labeling platform in the federal market to transform unstructured image, video, text, and audio data into actionable federal training datasets for ML. This solution is 10x faster than its market peers and has a 50 percent reduction in data total cost of ownership (TCO). Alongside this, our Metropolis Workforce™ platform is the nation’s largest, on-demand public sector labor platform with hundreds of data annotators. Complementing these platforms, HelloGov® also provides workforce services and staffing, IR&D AI software lab, and concrete innovative AI/ ML solutions that meet real-world problems within a viable timeframe.

2.What are some of the challenges federal agencies face in terms of AI/ML implementation, and how is HelloGov effectively addressing these issues?

Today, many C-level public sector operators agree with the fact that “ML is only as good as the data that it is trained with.” In simpler terms, the quality of the data that an ML model is trained on correlates directly with its success. Hence, just as the private sector spends 80 percent of its time on ML modeling, the public sector’s first and most critical steps should revolve around data preparation and training. Only by accurately labeling data can the training of the ML model be precise and perfect.

To this end, HelloGov® found that data labeling in public sector domains like defense and the military is an extremely labor-intensive process, often taking weeks or months to label a few hundred samples with inaccurate results. Further, public sector stakeholders also vocalize that the majority of data labeling solutions in the market are developed for the technical end-user (data scientists) and lack speed.

HelloGov is leading the movement to democratize AI/ML for the public sector


To this end, HelloGov® found that data labeling in public sector domains like defense and the military is an extremely labor-intensive process, often taking weeks or months to label a few hundred samples with inaccurate results. Further, public sector stakeholders also vocalize that the majority of data labeling solutions in the market are developed for the technical end-user (data scientists) and lack speed. Missioned to change this status quo, HelloGov realized that the best way to scale data labeling is with a combination of an ML-powered data labeling solution and a simple human interface that would democratize data labeling for non-technical end users, paving the way for its flagship data labeling platform, Carnegie Studio™. Using AI to match the right data annotators with the right tasks, HelloGov then launched Metropolis Workforce™ an on demand data labeling labor workforce for the public sector.

3.Please walk us through the AI/ML solutions offered by HelloGov, and in particular, discuss its implementation methodology, features, and benefits.

HelloGov’s full stack AI as a Service platform provides the public sector an end to end or soup to nuts, if you will enterprise ecosystem for AI/ML development, which can be implemented on premise (bare metal servers) or in the cloud (AWS GovCloud). The ecosystem allows agencies to label data 10 times faster, train models, and deploy turnkey federal AI applications to the cloud, on premise, IoT devices, and to the Edge (thick, air-gapped servers) effortlessly. HelloGov prides itself in offering one of the fastest and most accurate AI ecosystems to transform unstructured text, image, video, and audio data into valuable insights. Our al in one full stack platform also facilitates no code automation and acceleration of the entire ML lifecycle, from data ingestion to integration, storage, labeling, transformation, training, model development, and deployment.

4.Could you please cite one or two case studies on how HelloGov has enabled clients to overcome hurdles and attain desired outcomes with your innovative array of solutions?

Leveraging our full stack AI as a Service platform and Carnegie Studio™ data labeling software, we have worked with client Raytheon Technologies [NYSE:RTX] an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate to deliver an enterprise grade cyber ML application. Raytheon tasked HelloGov to rapidly develop an ML application that can extract valuable insights and make predictive recommendations for massive cyber events affecting one of its tactical ground operations. The HelloGov team promptly employed its proprietary AI/ML ecosystem and data labeling solution to deliver the solution in less than three months with high accuracy which indeed can be considered a massive feat.

5.What are some of the distinctive features of HelloGov that give it a competitive edge?

We believe in a human centered partnership model of people and artificial intelligence (AI) working together to enhance data preparation, machine learning, and cognitive performance. We tout ourselves as an H2H (Human to Human) company where we start with the human experience and work back toward the technology. Our Carnegie Studio™ platform, for instance, has a first-mover advantage in AI-enabled data labeling and is the only platform in the industry with a proprietary self explanatory user interface (SEUI) that allows anyone with minimal technical knowledge to label data at the speed and proficiency of a data scientist. Adjacently, we have also solved one of the most challenging aspects of AI/ML and data annotation human capital, through our “Uberized” on-demand labor workforce platform, Metropolis Workforce™.

Above all, with a vast background in defense and intelligence, we are exclusively and vertically integrated into the public sector as the only company with a “full stack” AI as a Service platform for end to end AI/ML development and operations. As a David going up against industry Goliaths, our competitive advantage starts with our core beliefs and is supplemented with our product market advantage.

6.What does the future hold for your organization?

Currently, we serve the state, civilian, and defense and intelligence communities, but we are also receiving a great deal of interest from commercial markets like the U.S. utilities sector. Besides, we are on track for 40 percent growth in product bookings and a 3x expansion of our team in 2022.


On a broader note, we understand that today, the global pandemic has accelerated the rise of AI (robotics), digitalization, and the onset of Industry 5.0 to foster a balanced working relationship between systems like AI and human intelligence. Hence, we are poised to lead the public sector into Industry 5.0 rather than competing with AI for jobs. We are also looking forward to providing the public sector with greater opportunities to leverage AI as a partner and continue pushing the envelope of democratizing AI/ML for the public sector.

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