Report on Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

Abstract of Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

In this paper, the focus will be to give a brief idea and background on relevant work done for the AI-based Chatbots. It will be analyzed in the first section, how other private and public sector organizations have used the essence of Chatbots, what problems were faced by them, what errors were faced by users, and how the overall experience was. Different real-world examples have been mentioned with facts and figures, like how people have reacted after using Chatbots, what was their satisfaction level, and what kind of errors have been noticed by the organizations providing Chatbots. Then a three-year project plan is briefly developed and explained for the U.S Department of Labor that they should start the project of integrating and implementing a Chatbot program to facilitate people, who use their website. It is concluded in the end after all the analysis, that the U.S Department of Labor can also enjoy the benefits enjoyed by other government organizations in the United States, as U.S people are showing liking the essence of Chatbots to get instant information and submit instant complaints. 

Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

Introduction of Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

There was a time, when communication was not as swift and instant, as it has become today with the help of modern communication technologies. Now, citizens can directly communicate with the government and their respective organizations. The information and communication technology (ICT) has brought a wonderful revolution in the communication patterns, which have drastically changed in the last decade or so. It is an important question for governments to answer, how should they communicate with their citizens, and what should be the way forward. It is vital to understand that real communication happens, when it is two-way communication, as one-way communication cannot come up with effective results because many gaps are there in one-way communication. Thanks to modern technology, a variety of communication tools are available in the recent era, and it is up to the choice of an organization, which tool they want to use to communicate with the public. This is very important for the government to decide how their different departments and organizations will communicate with citizens to provide better services to satisfy their needs (Bimber, 2010)

In this project paper, the focus is to develop a communication pattern for a U.S government organization, which will be based on AI, and it will be handled with the help of Chatbots technology. Government organizations should realize the importance of better communication with its citizens. They must know that in this modern era, the citizens living in representative democracies do need to talk to their government, and they want their voices to be heard so that their daily social and administrative problems are solved. The awareness level of citizens has vastly improved in recent years, so, they want instant communication with their government organizations to get their issues resolved as soon as possible (RICH , 2013). They want to remain updated on the status of any progress, development projects, or any complaints made by them. So, in this project, a project plan will be developed for the U.S Department of Labor, as it is one of the important government organizations dealing with the issues, administration, and legislative perspectives for the labor working in the country. So, a proposed plan will be explained in this paper. First of all, background and related work will be analyzed, how other government departments and organizations adopted the AI-based technology of Chatbots to communicate with citizens, and if this experiment was fruitful or not. Then a three-year plan will be developed for the U.S Department of Labor, how Chatbots technology will be implemented step by step, and how it will be measured, etc. After elaborating the plan, a discussion & analysis will be made and final thoughts will be shared in the end (Graham , 2014)

Background and Related Work

First of all, it is vital to look at the trend of adopting the technology of Chatbots on global scale. It was predicted by experts of the Business Insider that around 80% organizations will be using Chatbots by 2020. It has also been predicted that even 90% of the banks can automate their contact with customers with the help of Chatbots by 2022. A report was released by Drift, which revealed that around 27% clients with adult age range were ready to buy goods by getting guidance through Chatbots, and 13% U.S citizens have bought at least one single item after using Chatbots, and purchased items were expensive too. A report released by Adobe has revealed that the percentage of leading companies using Chatbots for marketing purposes is 28%, and the percentage for companies looking to use AI based Chatbots in coming 12 months is around 31%. The customers are also looking to use AI-based Chatbots, as it has been observed that the percentage of American people using smart speakers in their homes is 16%, who use smart speakers such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa. This trend is increasing with the passage of time, and it is also showing that if things will continue like this, then more organizations all around the globe will be using these Chatbots as a major communication method to deal with consumers (Chatbots Magazine, 2019). Here is a table showing the trend of using or implementing a plan of using Chatbots:

Figure 1

Source: (Chatbots Magazine, 2019)

The role of Chatbots has been significant in the field of e-commerce, as online Chatbots have been used by businesses and social media platforms to communicate with customers on instant basis. The governments around the world including the U.S government also started using Chatbots to communicate with the public, but this experiment has been a bit complex in this regard. The use of Chatbots by government bodies is a good initiative in so many ways. It is true that some problems have been noticed, but those problems can be eradicated at some point in time, making this communication channel more effective (Adam, Wessel, & Benlian , 2020). Different government departments are using Chatbots to provide instant information to the public. One good example comes from the health sector, where a Chatbot is used as a tool of communication. If a person is looking to get information on available public health hospitals in his/her areas, then he/she can simple ask for it from a Chatbot, and information will be there in few seconds. So, it saves a lot of time of public, rather navigating different webpages to find the relevant information, they instantly get it from the Chatbots. The other examples of using Chatbots in government bodies come to provide support 24/7 chat support through online platforms. Moreover, Chatbots are also used to collect valuable feedback of the public on different things (VirtualSpirits, 2020)

The primary question to answer is how effective these Chatbots have proved for government agencies and departments. There are so many benefits for the citizens when they use Chatbots in accessing information or launching any complaints. The primary benefit for the citizens is that they get quick and rapid access to information and data. They can easily submit their general complaints within a few minutes rather than waiting in queue to talk with a human agent. All of these activities are associated with saving a lot of time. For instance, if human resources are used to talk with customers, then the government can allocate limited resources for this task (Androutsopoulou, Karacapilidis, Loukis, & Charalabidis, 2018). So, if chat agents are 100 in numbers, whereas 300 customers are online seeking help, then the other 200 will have to wait for a few minutes to get their turn to chat with those agents. On the other hand, all 300 customers will get support from Chatbots at the same time, without waiting for anyone to turn up for them. The other great thing about Chatbots is language. The company or government department can ask the Software Development Company to add more languages in Chatbots so that if there are multiple languages spoken in any country, the people can easily communicate in their native languages. The benefits for the government bodies are also many if they use Chatbots. It is easy for the government to quickly resolve the issue of public, or providing instant help and information. The government can provide this service for 24/7 as Chatbots don’t need any breaks like humans. This integration of Chatbots is not too complex, and it can decrease costs for the government to deal with customers. These Chatbots are also good to increase the satisfaction level of the public regarding government institutions when they get instant and better support (Team, 2018)

The above mentioned benefits are evident, and many government agencies have been able to achieve these benefits. But still, it is also vital to look at the viewpoint of customers, like how they take this service for them. Are they satisfied with the Chatbots or not? It is said that it is an economy era, which is based in instant gratification. The largest enterprises of the world such as Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Lyft, etc. have made a habit for people to get instant help and support. So, they also expect the same level of service from Chatbots used by the government departments (Mierzwa, Souidi, Conroy, Watarai, & Allen, 2019). A survey was done from the U.S consumers to tell about their experiences with the Chatbots, and what kind of problems they face. The survey revealed that many people came up with issues, they faced while chatting with Chatbots. Some of them responded that Chatbots annoyed them by coming up with so many unhelpful responses. Some of the consumers told that Chatbot reversed back to the section of FAQs. Some Chatbots came up with unnecessary pleasantries, as well as, bad suggestions. It was quite interesting to hear that some of the people do complaint about Chatbots taking a lot of time to respond. Chatbots are liked for their instant response to save time of people, and if they also come up with late responses, then it is something to worry about. This survey was released by eMarketer.com, which came up with great insights. The 40% people came up with a feedback that Chatbots responses were creepy, and 27% people responses that Chatbots responses were cool (Garcia , 2018)

Figure 2

Source: (Garcia , 2018)

Regardless of the above-mentioned issues, the public sector has been moving towards the essence of artificial intelligence, and these Chatbots are a byproduct of artificial intelligence. That’s why; Chatbots are getting more importance with the passage of time. The tech companies are investing a lot of money and resources to develop Chatbots, which are more effective and efficient to serve the purpose of both private and public sector companies. It is an interesting and good development that the public sector is trying to develop Chatbots on their own so that they can revolutionize the service delivery for the public. A variety of routine tasks and responses can be handled by the Chatbots, which reduce the workload of public servants, who are always loaded with so much work to handle. There are so many mundane queries, which can easily be handled by the Chatbots. One such successful experiment was done by the North Carolina’s Innovation Center. They somehow measured that many of the queries coming from people are regarding their account information and password resetting. So, they developed Chatbots to help resources to know information about their accounts and resetting their passwords. The data revealed that more than 80% of queries were related to recovering passwords and account information. Now, these kinds of queries can easily be handled by a Chatbot, rather reserving a human resource in the IT help desk. It allowed North Carolina’s Innovation Center to free their help desk agents to handle more complex tasks, rather than staying online for such routine tasks. More governments around the world are using Chatbots. One good example is from Australia as the Australian Tax Office developed a Chatbot with the name “Alex” and this Chatbot was helpful in giving answers to tax-related questions (Desouza & Krishnamurthy, 2017)

The organizations have been facing a variety of issues and errors, when they integrated Chatbot or Intelligent Assistants. A survey was conducted from the organizations, using Chatbots, and this survey revealed that organizations noticed a variety of errors. Some of these errors are given in the below figure:

Figure 3

Source: (Chatbots Magazine, 2019)

The government of the United States also understood the importance of Chatbots, and they decided that they will use Chatbots to assist the public at large so that they can get easy and quick information and response from the government bodies. One of the initiatives was made by the USA.gov website to use Chatbots for better service delivery and improving the essence of customer services. The services team and technology transformation team working in the General Services Administration (GSA) was given the task of Chatbot, so they developed a Chatbot with the help of Artificial Intelligence. A beta project was launched to provide customer services through Chatbots. The beauty of such Chatbots is that they not only provide a quick response to users, but they are also helpful for GSA type organizations to make quick decisions. The other benefit of such Chatbot is that they never get tired like humans. If a human resource is working for the last 7 hours, then his work efficacy and response time maybe not that effective in the last hour of his shift. But Chatbots don’t face such kind of problem, rather their efficacy, response, and service delivery will remain the same for 24 hours until the software is having any issues at the backend. The Chatbot developed by the GSA proved a handful for both the GSA and the public. The majority of the public got a good response from the Chatbot, and the organization was also able to get useful data on the type of questions and queries asked by the public in general terms. The modern AI-based technology helped the GSA team to effectively use data and manage it accordingly (Federal Data Strategy, 2019). This implementation of Chatbots in the GSA proved a successful project. Here is the interface of Chatbot, shown on the GSA website:

Figure 4

Source: (Federal Data Strategy, 2019)

Three Year Plan for the U.S Department of Labor

In this two year plan to develop and implement a Chatbot for the U.S Department of Labor; various steps and strategies will be explained so that a comprehensive project is made for the integration of Chatbot in the Department of Labor. 

Plan for Year 1: Analysis and Engagement

Quarter 1

In the first quarter of the 1st year of this project, the primary focus will be to analyze the process and come up with use full insights and information, how this Chatbot based on AI can help the Department of Labor to better serve public and how public service delivery is also improved. In the first step, the department will define its goals. A business firm may have a goal of increasing the process of sales and that’s why they invest in such platforms. But the department of labor will use this Chatbot to increase the response rate as well as the speed of the response rate for people, who visit the website for the different kinds of information or to submit complaints against their employers. The second most important thing is to define the elements of users. The department of labor is for all labor working in the United States, so they need to develop a comprehensive plan, where people should be given a better engagement process. For instance, if any community or state needs extra facility in terms of language or anything else, then Chatbots should be integrated with those options. Third important thing is to learn from other U.S government departments, who are already using Chatbots to service the public. A handful of information can be obtained by those departments in this regard. They will share information on benefits, issues, and errors, which can be used to develop a better plan.

Quarter 2

Once the handful of information is collected during the first quarter, the IT team will then work to look for suitable platforms, which will be used for the Chatbots. It is up to the choice of the labor department, how and where they want to provide Chatbot services. It is proposed that the department will provide Chatbot services through the official website. Any other platform such as any social media platform will not be included in this initial project. The labor department will also measure the requirements of people by analyzing previous questions, queries, problems, and feedback of the people. The complaints will also be analyzed to see a pattern, which complaints have been more common. Then all of the requirements will be developed after analyzing this data so that the work pattern of the Chatbot is prioritized. Design of the Chatbot will be made by developing a conversation flow. 

Quarter 3

In the last quarter of the first year, it will be decided which technology will be suitable as per the design of the Chatbot made for the labor department. An analytics tool will also be integrated with the Chatbot so that the labor department can get real-time information, and they can also get meaningful insights from the data, which will be created through the Chatbot communication. All three quarters will end up a design of the Chatbot to be tried in the next year. 

Plan for Year 2: Pilot Projects of Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

The second year of this plan will continue with the process, where it was left at the end of the first year. At the end of the 1st year, a Chatbot was designed and developed for the pilot project. So, the second year will be carried out with different testing of the design Chatbot. The Chatbot will be made live on the website of the Labor of Department. The first pilot study will run for five months, and data will also be analyzed. After the first four months, the users will be identified who used Chatbot. Then those users will be contacted through the email channel and they will be asked to provide feedback to show their experience with the Chatbot. Then collected feedback will be analyzed, and useful information will be filtered out to make improvements in the Chatbot. This process will be completed in 1 month. Then the second pilot project will run for the next 5 months, and it will also be analyzed very closely. The users will also be contacted again to get their views. Last month will again be used to analyze data, feedback, errors of Chatbot, and required improvements will be made. 

Plan for Year 3: Implementation and Evaluation

The third year of this project will start with the implementation and integration of the Chatbot on the website of the labor department. The Chatbot will be available for the people to use with its all options. The important and required information was collected and analyzed during the first two years, so a lot of improvements were made by looking at errors and issues. If people will give any suggestions, then those suggestions will also be taken into consideration. An analytics tool will also be integrated with the Chatbot so that real-time analyzes and evaluation of the service is done. The Chatbot will be analyzed on a daily basis to ensure users are not facing any issues or bugs. The IT team will continuously evaluate the Chatbot and ensure that no issues are there. If any issue will be identified, then it will be removed as quickly as possible. The IT team of the labor department will have a close eye on the Chatbot so that it engages well with the people, and it does not give any errors. For instance, if the IT team will analyze that an error is repeated by the Chatbot, then they will analyze those chat data to see why the error is being made. Maybe Chatbot is showing issues due to the typo-error of the users, and Chatbot is not able to understand the word used in the question. All of such errors will be evaluated in real-time, and their resolution will also be found as quickly as possible. From now onwards, constant improvements will be made till the end of year 3, and then the next course of action will be taken as per the circumstances, whether to continue with this Chatbot or not. 

Discussion and Analysis of Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

It is critical to understand that every project can face a variety of issues, and many of these issues can be unforeseen. But more important thing is to continue with the process with hard work and honesty so that end goals are achieved. The background on the use of Chatbots, as well as, the three-year plan for developing and implementing a Chatbot based on AI has provided that project is very much feasible for the Department of Labor. It has been observed that various other government bodies in the United States have integrated Chatbots to serve the public, and they are running this program very successfully. So, it is an indication that Chatbots’ experiment has gone successful for the government departments, and the labor department can also enjoy the same benefits, enjoyed by other government departments. The laborers from all parts of the country can get valid and updated information, and they will also be given a chance to submit some standard complaints against their employers. For instance, in the current time, the pandemic of Coronavirus has really impacted the labor market, and if Chatbot would have been there at the labor department website, it would have better assisted the people on the ongoing situation and developments. 

The other positive thing for the labor department to continue with this project is the fact that various studies and surveys have shown that the majority of users have liked to interact with Chatbots for a rapid response and instant communication. The consumers from France, UK, and Australia are found to use Chatbots more than any other country. But the United States is also not far behind, and this percentage is increasing with the passage of time. The surveys have shown that American consumers tend to like to use Chatbots for instant communication, and the trend is showing a positive increase in numbers. One of the studies has revealed that using Chatbot is liked by more than 62% of U.S consumers (Press, 2019). The people are also using it to communicate with the government departments. It has been estimated if Chatbots and AI bases instant messaging services will continue to develop and improve in this fashion, and then there will be a time when human workers will be replaced by these Chatbots in the future. Still, a long way to go in this regard, but it looks to be the future of communication between organizations and public (Goldstein, 2016)

Conclusion of Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

After analyzing the background and related work in the field of Chatbots based on AI, and deriving a three-year project plan for the U.S labor of department, it can be said that things are looking quite positive for the labor department to install and integrate a Chatbot service on its official website. Many private and public sector organizations around the world, including the United States, have integrated Chatbots as a method of instant communication with its audience. The private sector is able to increase the satisfaction level of consumers, along with having so many benefits. A variety of benefits are also enjoyed by the government bodies and organizations, which have been able to give a better response to its citizens. The people are too busy these days; one cannot wait for 15 minutes for a human chat agent to turn up to respond. Moreover, there are so many routine queries’ and questions asked by people, and Chatbots can answer them immediately, which saves a lot of time. So, the labor department can consider these benefits and this three-year plan to adopt Chatbots as a method of communication. 

References of Strategy to Develop an AI based System of Chatbot for Government Organization

Adam, M., Wessel, M., & Benlian , A. (2020). AI-based chatbots in customer service and their effects on user compliance. Electronic Markets.

Androutsopoulou, A., Karacapilidis, N., Loukis, E., & Charalabidis, Y. (2018). Transforming the communication between citizens and government through AI-guided chatbots. Government Information Quarterly, 1-10.

Bimber, B. (2010). The Internet and Citizen Communication With Government: Does the Medium Matter? Political Communication, 16(4), 409-428.

Chatbots Magazine. (2019). Chatbot Report 2019: Global Trends and Analysis. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://chatbotsmagazine.com/chatbot-report-2019-global-trends-and-analysis-a487afec05b

Desouza, K., & Krishnamurthy, R. (2017). Chatbots move public sector toward artificial intelligence. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2017/06/02/chatbots-move-public-sector-towards-artificial-intelligence/

Federal Data Strategy. (2019). USA.gov Uses Human-Centered Design to Roll Out AI Chatbot. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://strategy.data.gov/proof-points/2019/06/07/usagov-uses-human-centered-design-to-roll-out-ai-chatbot/

Garcia , K. (2018). Customer Service Seekers Prefer Bypassing Humans: But many would take a person over a chatbot. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.emarketer.com/content/customer-service-seekers-prefer-bypassing-humans

Goldstein, P. (2016). Will Chatbots and AI Replace Federal Customer Service Reps? Retrieved May 8, 2020, from https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/08/will-chatbots-and-ai-replace-federal-customer-service-reps

Graham , M. W. (2014). Government communication in the digital age: Social media’s effect on local government public relations. Public Relations Inquiry, 3(3), 361-376.

Mierzwa, S., Souidi, S., Conroy, T., Watarai, H., & Allen, T. (2019). On the Potential, Feasibility, and Effectiveness of Chat Bots in Public Health Research Going Forward. Online J Public Health Inform, 11(2).

Press, G. (2019). AI Stats News: 62% Of US Consumers Like Using Chatbots To Interact With Businesses. Retrieved May 8, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2019/10/25/ai-stats-news-us-consumers-interest-in-using-chatbots-to-interact-with-businesses-rise-to-62/#172d69363974

RICH , S. (2013). How to Improve Government-to-Citizen Communication. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.govtech.com/e-government/How-to-Improve-Government-to-Citizen-Communication.html

Team, F. (2018). How Chatbots are Beneficial to Government Agencies. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://chatbotsmagazine.com/how-chatbots-are-beneficial-to-government-agencies-6e21052e3ba4

VirtualSpirits. (2020). Government chat bots: 4 examples of how government agencies use chatbots. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from https://www.virtualspirits.com/government-chat-bots-4-examples-of-how-government-agencies-use-chatbots.aspx