The whole world is trying to harness technological development and the digital revolution to improve people’s quality of life and facilitate their daily transactions. With this in mind, governmental entities alleviated administrative burdens and reduced waiting times and the number of employees by creating automated systems based on cognitive technology, such as the talking bot that improves service level and reduces the need for human intervention in certain cases.

Australia was a leading country in this field, as the Department of Human Services (DHS) developed a virtual assistant or bot, dubbed Roxy, to help entry-level employees who have questions about DHS laws and procedures. Since its design in 2016, Roxy has helped DHS staff with online complaints. This innovation was followed by the launch of other virtual assistants such as Sam, Oliver, Naomi, and Nadia.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Roxy was fed comprehensive data on DHS policies and procedures to answer all expert and employee inquiries via Skype. Over three months, Roxy answered 80% of the questions.

Roxy has alleviated the burden on senior management personnel and reduced the load by 20% on complaint officials. Since 2016, Roxy has answered 95,000 questions, expanding its knowledge database to 6,680 questions and answers.

Roxy has been a major success and the fact that the public administration intends to use its services in customer service is proof. Moreover, Sam, the bot, is used to answer employee inquiries related to DHS services. To confirm the success of the bot experience, another VR is currently under development to help mentor and guide high school graduates to choose the right major or professional specialization.