4 Ways the Government Could Run Better Using Augmented and Virtual Reality
Apple is officially entering the mixed reality headset space.
Later today at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple is expected to announce that it will be releasing a mixed reality headset of its very own — Vision Pro.
This is kind of a very big deal. When Apple released the iPhone back in 2007, it changed the way developers thought about software.
Apple initiated the move toward app-based mobile computing and built its monolithic app store around it. Today’s tech economy is largely driven by this shift. There’s reason to believe it could do the same thing with augmented and virtual reality.
Up until now the adoption of augmented and virtual reality has been tepid at best. Relegated to early adopters with limited use cases for fitness and gaming. That’s because the software to build in mixed reality is still being built.
For that to continue happening there needs to be a growing demand for programs built in mixed reality. As the Zuck is learning the hard way, building a virtual world no one wants to play in is a waste of time and money.
While Apple is typically seen as a trendy consumer-facing company, demand most likely won’t come from individual consumers. Without the digital infrastructure in place to justify the purchase, it's unlikely they’ll queue up for a Reality Pro headset when it launches.
The biggest demand signal, instead, could come from the U.S. government. Apple and other developers in this space would be wise to start looking for dual-use opportunities that can be rolled out to consumers down the road.
This essay is going to briefly dive into government applications for augmented and virtual reality. Specifically, how it can lower the cost to deliver training and maintenance programs while making them more effective in the process.
Augmented and virtual reality headsets are tools that could improve training effectiveness.
Several years ago I supported a government program that trained foreign partners on how to handle and properly dispose of dangerous materials, like radiological waste. The training material was taught as most trainings are— by PowerPoint. Due to the nature of it, trainees couldn’t practice what they were learning in the classroom. Everything was quite abstract and it was difficult to measure the effectiveness of the training we were providing.
Augmented reality could have enhanced the value of those training sessions, making them more effective. While virtual reality is fully immersive, augmented reality blends physical reality with digital elements. By wearing special lenses — or even just by using a phone — you can observe the world around you with digital overlays placed in it. Instead of talking about how to respond to a dirty bomb, the trainees in my program could have responded to a simulated one in real-time.
The adoption of mixed reality solutions has the ability to streamline training programs and make them more effective. For the government, especially the Department of Defense and the military service branches, this means delivering more effective training programs that simulate scenarios soldiers could face in combat or under duress. The value of enhanced combat readiness is immeasurable.
The following are some of the possible use cases for incorporating mixed reality tools into government training programs. While the Department of Defense is one of the best candidates for these solutions, government agencies ranging from the State Department to the Centers for Disease Control could benefit too.
Medical Procedures
One of the best use cases for immersive training is in the field of medicine. Whether it's for teaching doctors in residency or training combat medics, there’s a lot of value in simulating procedures.
For one, it helps medical staff anticipate complications. According to some reports, around 250,000 patients die in the United States every year due to medical mistakes. While simulated training isn’t a guarantee that it will eliminate mistakes, it can help prepare medical professionals to anticipate them before they are made.
Immersive training is also location agnostic. This in and of itself is a significant cost-saving measure. Trainees don’t have to be physically present to benefit from a simulated training. And trainers don’t have to make sure they have enough cadavers for students to train on. Virtually immersive simulations can allow trainings to happen at scale, anywhere in the world.
Government Application: The Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Institutes of Health, and the military service branches are all good candidates for incorporating immersive medical training curriculums into existing programs.
Maintenance Programs
The Department of Defense’s 2024 budget request is a whopping $842 billion. According to Bloomberg, around $18.5 billion in the FY23 budget was allocated toward maintenance and repair costs. That’s not an insignificant sum of money.
F-35s and combat ships don’t run on their own. There is a team of specialists assigned to maintain military assets. Those specialists have to be trained.
Augmented reality training is one solution to making the process more effective. It does this by not only overlaying digital representations of things that need to be fixed, but it can also walk you through the entire maintenance process too. There are already applications for this with automotive maintenance. It would be logical to apply this to things like F-35s as well.
Government Application: Military service branches, particularly the Navy, could benefit the most from augmented reality maintenance solutions. The Navy maintains a chronic maintenance backlog which results in ships being decommissioned far sooner than they need to be. Augmented reality maintenance programs could allow the Navy to train the workers they desperately need and perform routine maintenance to keep their ships afloat.
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Foreign Language Immersion
The best way to learn a language is to fully immerse yourself in it. A classroom is great for learning grammar and vocabulary, but it isn’t ideal for becoming conversational. I would know because I shipped myself off to Jordan in 2013 to do just that.
The challenge with two-dimensional learning, whether on an app or over a Zoom call, is that it’s devoid of context. This is why a lot of people actually learn English — not by doing exercises in textbooks — but by watching shows like Friends or The Sopranos. Culture provides both the vocabulary and context needed to make language stick.
A fully immersive experience could radically change how adults in particular learn a new language. Learners could connect with native speakers in real-time in the metaverse — or even utilize voice recognition software — to get instant feedback. Incorporating practical scenarios into the curriculum, such as experiencing walking into a patisserie in Paris and ordering a baguette, provides the context needed to master a language.
Government Application: The Department of Defense manages the Defense Language Institute while the Department of State runs the School of Language Studies. Within these departments are individual programs, like the Marshall Center, which also provides language training. They all have the same mission — to provide foreign language and cultural training.
A digital platform could centralize language training, reducing the overhead of managing multiple duplicate federally-funded programs. Even though government departments and program managers care about who foots the bill, the language teachers they hire don’t. They just want to get paid.
SOP Codification
One of the reasons the civil service is so critical to government operations is because that is where the bulk of institutional knowledge lies. If someone retires and hasn’t codified their job operations somewhere, that knowledge is gone.
Mixed reality can improve how knowledge is retained across time. Instead of using static folder filing systems and maintaining operating procedures in Microsoft Word, mixed reality can store knowledge in a manner that will be more accessible in the future.
This might not seem important now but it will be critical when increasingly digitally native workers enter the federal workforce. It’s not that they won’t be able to read a standard operating procedure on their computer. It’s that the skill will have atrophied for them in much the same way perusing the stacks in the library and finding information in an encyclopedia has atrophied for you and me. To prepare the workforce of tomorrow you have to meet them where they are and that’s in different forms of digital media.
Government Application: Any agency that has a specific process for doing things could benefit from mixed reality codification. This could be any activity ranging from walking someone through how to evaluate a contract proposal to how to perform an IT systems check.
Standardized processes codified in mixed reality will be easier for younger employees to train on and more accessible to cross-train existing employees within a department. Doing so mitigates the loss of knowledge over time and reduces the costs associated with onboarding and training new personnel.
Final takeaway.
There are a lot of opportunities to make the government more effective and run more cost-efficiently by adopting mixed reality. Training, whether that’s for internal purposes or to deploy in the field, is an area where the government could benefit the most.
But a bigger reason why the government should adopt mixed reality solutions is that it could be the catalyst for the growth of virtual reality altogether.
The internet we use today would not have come into existence without DARPA. It was originally designed for the military to use to link the networks of different agencies together. The invention of ARPANET made a consumer-facing version of the internet possible.
While Silicon Valley tech companies are great innovators, they too have their limits. They are beholden to business models that derive profit for their shareholders. It’s possible that Meta could eventually build a successful version of the metaverse, but it may take more time than shareholders can stomach.
For all its shortcomings, the government is actually the best end-user for innovative technologies. It has an abundance of problems to fix and an endless amount of resources to make that happen.
By framing the introduction of augmented and virtual reality as a cost-saving measure that could lead to better outcomes, government applications of mixed reality solutions could pave the way for further adoption elsewhere in the economy.