Government Chatbots: Top Benefits & Use Cases in 2024

Chatbots are designed to streamline interactions between people and services, by increasing the ease of use and facilitating the execution of tasks. Chatbots exist in several industries such as mental health, retail, real estate, travel, customer service, B2B transactions, insurance sector, and more. 

Chatbots are also useful to inform the public about certain issues or to help handle their queries. In this article, we will look at benefits, use cases, and case studies of government chatbots.

What are the benefits of government chatbots?

The following are some of the benefits of government chatbots:

• Easy navigation: Chatbots can help citizens easily navigate through government websites portals by providing them direct links.
• Availability: Chatbots’ 24/7 availability means citizens can access the relevant information or ask their questions day and night.
• Efficient and economical: Chatbots offer instant responses. This reduces time wastage. Moreover, employing a chatbot costs 30% less than hiring a live agent.
• Consistency in answers: Because chatbots use a command catalogue to leverage their answers from, they will always provide the same, pre-approved answer to the same question. This avoids confusion amongst the public, and minimizes the spread of false information.

What are the use cases of government chatbots?

The following are some of the use cases of government chatbots:

1. Tax information: Citizens can ask government chatbots about tax filing forms, deadlines, and other tax-related queries..
2. Public information: Chatbots can provide the public with general, useful information, such as upcoming construction plans or public offices’ operating hours.
3. Transit information: Without requiring the user to visit many portals, chatbots can display public transit timetables immediately.
4. Event and happenings’ information: Government chatbots can give information on upcoming festivals, flea markets, or other happenings of such nature.
5. Business permits inquiries: Entrepreneurs thinking of starting a business can ask government chatbots’ about local governments’ rules and regulations for business permit issuance.
6. Public health information: Users can ask the chatbots about public health measures and other related health information.
7. Immigration issues: Immigrants can follow up on their application status or pose any general question they might have, such as the correct type of form that they need to fill.

What are some case studies of government chatbots?

The top case studies of chatbots in government and public sector service include:

Department of HomeLand Security, USA: EMMA

EMMA is a chatbot developed for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of HomeLand Security. It caters to one million applicants per month, and is able  to handle requests in both English and Spanish. Its capabilities include answering questions about immigration services, green card acquisition process, passports, and other services that USCIS offers.

Government of Mississippi State Chatbot: MISSI

MISSI is a chatbot for the state of Mississippi. It answers residents’ questions about taxation, health services, public transport schedule, elderly care centers, social gatherings, tourism hotspots, and possible job opportunities.

Government of San Francisco’s Chatbot: PAIGE

Procurement Answers and Information Guided Experience (PAIGE) is a San Francisco Procurement chatbot application for internal workers. It is powered  by Facebook’s NLP platform and is intended to assist the employees of San Francisco’s government with their digital/IT procurement.

Government of Kansas City Chatbot : OpenDataKC

The Kansas City government created OpenDataKC to help its citizens navigate through its vast open data portal to get the information they want without having to navigate through the website.

General Services Administration, USA: Mrs. Landingham

“Mrs. Landingham,” named after a fictional character on a TV show, is the U.S. General Services Administrations’ HR chatbot for guiding new hires through their onboarding processes, such as, filling forms, scheduling meetings, and more.

Government of Dubai’s Chatbot, Rammas

RAMMAS is Dubai’s Electricity & Water Authority’s chatbot that was launched on the Google AI platform and is  available on their website, iOS, Android, Amazon’s Alexa, and Facebook. Since its launch in January 2017, the Government of Dubai claims that RAMMAS successfully processed 700,000 requests helping people pay their bills, get their questions answered, and navigate through the website.

Government of Singapore Chatbot: Gov.sg

Gov.sg is Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information’s Facebook messenger chatbot. It gives residents information about government agencies, news, press releases, workforce, complaints, public service outages, and public health data.

Government of Australian Chatbot: Alex

“Alex” is the Australian Taxation Office’s chatbot. It’s intended to help people and corporations through their tax and legal issues, such as intellectual property (IP) rights, tax filings, income, and deductions.

For more on chatbots

If you are interested in learning more about chatbots, read:

• Top 14 Open Source Chatbots in 2022
• Chatbots vs. Conversational AI: Glaring Differences

Moreover, if you believe your business could benefit from adopting a chatbot application, check out our chatbot platform, where we have data-driven lists of vendors.

And we can guide you through the process: