141 PUBLIC SECTOR The upgraded Boti with ChatGPT chatbot personalises interactions in real time and can respond in both Spanish and English. To date, it has managed more than 17,000 queries autonomously, which has halved the operational workload for government employees. Similarly, Montgomery County in Maryland, USA, worked with Microsoft partner Zammo.ai to introduce an AI agent built on Azure OpenAI Service that can conduct multi-turn conversations on more than 3,000 topics in 140 languages. Monty 2.0 also uses Montgomery County’s geographic information system to provide personalised responses based on the user’s address. Since it launched in late 2024, Monty 2.0 has facilitated more than 20,000 constituent conversations, achieving a 50 per cent customer satisfaction rate and reducing unanswered queries from between 35 and 45 per cent to just 10 to 15 per cent. “Immigrants or members of the public who don’t speak the government’s official language fluently are often excluded from accessing the services and support they need,” says Arthur. “However, chatbots powered by generative AI can translate both speech and text in real time, so everyone can communicate effectively in their preferred language. This eliminates communication barriers and increases service accessibility and equity.” To reap the benefits of these AI tools, government organisations must carefully plan their adoption strategy. “They can start by defining the business outcomes they would like to achieve and building a dedicated team of internal stakeholders that can develop and implement a strategy for using AI to fulfil these goals,” advises Arthur. “Next, they must clean up their existing data and use grounding and retrieval augmented generation to ensure the AI tool can pull realtime data from multiple sources to deliver the most accurate and relevant responses.” Crucially, organisations must set parameters to guarantee the AI tool can only access specific data that aligns to their governance policies to prevent security breaches, adds Arthur. “It’s essential to implement robust security measures to safeguard systems and data,” he says. “By putting Zero Trust principles at the core of their cybersecurity strategy, organisations can ensure everything is locked down by default, which stops employees from accidentally – or maliciously The public can use AI-powered chatbots like Montgomery County’s Monty 2.0 and Buenos Aires City’s Boti with ChatGPT app to get immediate answers to their questions
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