Page 36 - Federal Computer Week, January/February 2019

Emerging Tech
ment,” he added. However, he said he has been getting questions from feder- al, state and local governments about deploying chatbots to improve citizen services.
Some agencies have already deployed such bots. For instance, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Emma is a bilingual interactive assistant that sits in the top right of the agency’s web- site waiting for users to click and ask questions. And the Army’s Sgt. Star can answer questions about joining the ser- vice, including pay rates and enrollment processes.
Since launching a chatbot last year, the Montana Department of Justice’s Gambling Control Division has seen a 47.3 percent interaction rate with the bot, which has reduced the number of phone calls that employees need to handle, said Anne Gerken, the division’s communications specialist.
“Our investigators who interact with licensees on a regular basis...really love the fact that they can open [the bot] up on their cell phones and either access a concrete answer or provide a quick tutorial on how to use the bot instead of having to search through our website,” Gerken said.
The division updates the bot based on the questions it receives. “If we notice a new pattern, we add to our ‘frequently asked questions’ database,” she said. “We might also update com- mon terms used for searching the bot.”
The office is also in the process of creating a new bot that will have more capabilities. “Ideally, it will be more useful for patrons by providing more specific direction in their single-word searches,” Gerken added.
Eventually, officials would like to use the bot to help licensees locate forms, applications and statistics — and per- haps even submit applications.
A key benefit of a chatbot’s conver- sational user interface is that it’s easy for anyone to use. “Everybody knows how to ask a question. There’s no learn- ing curve associated with it if you do
a good conversational user interface,” Baker said. “Once the question or the request is fully understood by the chat- bot or virtual assistant, that can kick off business processes that run in the back end.”
Mississippi Interactive (MSI), a subsid- iary of NIC, is looking into ways to make transactions happen within Mississippi’s chatbot, Missi, said Dana Wilson, MSI’s general manager. For example, users would be able to ask Missi when their driver’s license expires and get an accu- rate response. A future goal is to have the bot walk users through the process of completing that transaction.
Since launching in 2017, Missi has responded to 24,000 questions — a number that has surprised officials. “We don’t get that many phone calls, so it’s interesting to see that many people taking advantage of an artificial intelli- gence platform specifically for govern- ment,” she said. “You could really see the value of an artificial chatbot being able to field those questions any time of day as opposed to taking those calls and having a human interaction,” which means agencies could dedicate those resources to higher-level activities.
To determine what information to offer first, MSI studied the top search terms and website traffic. “We looked to our site analytics, took the top search- es, and those were the first things to onboard to the chatbot since those were the majority of what people were com- ing to look for online,” said Drew Levan- way, MSI’s director of operations.
On the other side of the country, Los Angeles’ Information Technology Agency saw results quickly when it launched its Chip chatbot on the city’s Business Assistance Virtual Network in 2016. “We saw an immediate drop — almost 70 percent — of the general email questionnaires that were being asked, so that was a cost savings for my developers’ time,” said Joyce Edson, LA’s deputy CIO.
Chip, short for City Hall Internet Per- sonality, has had 20,000 conversations
and fielded about 100,000 questions. Now, ITA is working on LACIE, which stands for the Los Angeles City Interactive Experience. Edson expects it to come online this year. “We want to bring her to life with location-based [augmented reality], kind of in the vein of Pokemon Go,” she said. The goal is to move bots from a voice heard through the Amazon Echo, Google Home or
Chip to a virtual physical presence.
RPA-powered chatbots
Chatbots’ capabilities are expanding through the use of RPA, which involves automating repetitive customer service tasks such as renewing licenses and registering properties. If a chatbot can “walk somebody through the steps that they need...that’s going to both benefit the citizenry in that it makes it easier for them to do [and] it also benefits the gov- ernment” because agencies often don’t have the resources to deliver services quickly and efficiently, Baker said.
RPA increases accuracy, speed and standardization and can save 40 per- cent to 70 percent on labor costs, with near zero error rates in front- and back- office functions, according to a recent NASCIO report. It can also be used across multiple systems.
The NSSC bots use RPA, as do the Department of Health and Human Services’ Accelerate, which stream- lines high-priority acquisitions, and the Defense Information Systems Agency’s experimental bot that auto- mates aspects of the auditing process in the Accounting and Readiness Division.
The General Services Administration is considering using RPA to “open our programs to better decision-making through AI,” Keith Nakasone, deputy assistant commissioner for acquisition operations at the agency’s Office of IT Category, told a congressional subcom- mittee last year.
GSA has six active bots — four in the CFO’s office and two in the Public Build- ings Service. One application enters
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