3 ways that AI is driving the evolution of social services in government

An indigenous elder suffering chronic health conditions in a remote village needs help traveling to receive medical care. A single mother in in a crowded city loses her job and seeks unemployment and childcare benefits. A young worker in a multilingual country cannot access housing assistance because he doesn’t speak the official language.

These are just a few of the incredibly broad range of scenarios in which people around the world look to government social services entities for help and support. In fact, more than half the world’s population (52.4%) are covered by at least one social protection benefit.¹ As these services expand, dedicated public organizations and agencies strive to administer benefits programs, enhance access to healthcare, and protect vulnerable populations—even as they face growing pressure to do more with less.

Helping government agencies and organizations explore the potential of AI and build new solutions that deliver both near-term impact and long-term transformation is central to our work at Microsoft for Government. We cultivate longstanding partnerships with government organizations of all types to help innovate and deliver secure, trustworthy services that promote safety, health, and prosperity.

Discover solutions with Microsoft for Government

How generative AI is opening new avenues of impact

Fueled by a convergence of modern challenges, AI has quickly emerged as a uniquely transformative solution in delivering social services. Budgetary and workforce pressures, the proliferation of data, and constituents’ demands for services that mirror private sector offerings all add to the pressure. And that’s not to mention escalating cyberthreats and the complexity of business and technology.

Generative AI—with its unique abilities to synthesize data, understand natural language, retain contextual information, summarize content, and write documents and code—is uniquely suited to help answer these challenges. With powerful solutions like Microsoft 365 Copilot, custom-developed agents and chatbots, and other innovations that integrate AI into regular workflows and processes, governments have the opportunity to not just fix the old but invent the new.

Around the world, agencies and organizations have had remarkable success in early AI use cases designed to help improve efficiency, streamline service delivery, and gain powerful insights from data and predictive analytics. Here are three examples of critical impact we’ve seen in the past year:

1. Enhance constituent experiences with easier access to information

As expectations for fast, personalized digital services grow, many governments are seeing immediate impact with AI-powered chatbots or other virtual assistants to handle ranges of inquiries and assistance.

These innovations are available at any hour of the day and are well equipped to handle large volumes of requests for help with things like licensing, transit, taxation, and more. They let people engage on the channel of their choice—such as phone calls, digital chat, and social media—and use different languages to rapidly get the right information, apply for benefits, receive updates, and report incidents.

A great example is a chatbot called Boti, which the government of the City of Buenos Aires recently revamped using Microsoft Azure OpenAI services to revolutionize public interactions. Trained on an extensive government database, the chatbot uses natural language interaction to handle 2 million queries per month, helping citizens find services—everything from basic services like driver’s license renewals to public health information and personalized information for tourists. Along the way, it has lowered the operational burden by 50%.

The beauty of these kinds of solutions is that they ease the burden of finding and getting the best possible service, even when people have little idea of who or what agency to contact. AI makes it easier for a constituent to explore their options. And then, when they do engage, they only need to provide their critical information one time.

Not forcing someone to continually supply the same information as they move through the system is a huge consideration in cases where people have experienced traumatic, emotional, or embarrassing events. Participation is strained when a person is forced to re-explain and re-live unpleasant experiences. So, AI’s ability to retain essential details through a case management process and retain context from queries helps ensure an experience that is not only more efficient but also more dignified.

AI also plays a role in helping constituents when they are unhappy with their services. An AI-powered contact center, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center, can provide new levels of support that can enhance human decision-making. For example, an AI-powered contact center can trigger an escalation to a customer service representative when sentiment analysis detects a person getting frustrated or upset. Using intelligent routing, it can connect the constituent to the best representative based on context and need, and assist the representative by summarizing the person’s situation, suggesting optimal solutions, and even drafting response recommendations.

2. Boost the efficiency and effectiveness of staff

One of the most vital advances in the digital evolution of government is the shift away from cumbersome tasks involving antiquated websites, electronic forms, even paper-based processes, to automated, intelligent systems that not only ease data collection but also interpret data, learn from it, and even act on it.

With AI acting as an intelligent, ever-present assistant, social services case workers and caregivers are able to focus more on helping people and spend less time on tedious tasks than before. These new tools give workers instant access to relevant information from across data silos—including unstructured data such as content in PDFs, files, websites, and even digitized hand-written documents—all of which had largely been unavailable to analysis before.

For example, the Torfaen County Borough Council in Wales, United Kingdom, saw gains in productivity after they adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, which integrates generative AI into everyday applications including Word, Excel, and Outlook. The process of taking and recording notes, for example, has been dramatically simplified, which is freeing workers to spend more time engaging with residents and providing personalized services.

With the help of AI assistance, a case worker can serve constituents far more effectively. Client meetings, for example, can be completely transformed. Meeting preparation can be done faster and far more comprehensively, with insights and recommendations gleaned from information across the enterprise, including from files that were previously inaccessible, restricted, or difficult to extract meaningful insights from. The meeting can be recorded and automatically transcribed, which enables the case worker to focus on their client versus note-taking. Afterwords, Microsoft Teams can transcribe and summarize the meeting, with details and action items imported directly into case management systems.

3. Enhance processes and outcomes with advanced analytics

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of AI is the power of advanced analytics. This refers to AI’s unique ability to turn raw data into actionable insights by identifying patterns, making connections, and even predicting outcomes. In health and social services, this can translate into a variety of useful benefits.

For instance, AI can help turn the often-cumbersome process of evaluating applications for benefits or other social services into a faster, more precise, and user-friendly process. It can analyze information against policy rules, interpret regulations to help ensure criteria are met, and cross-check submitted data with official records. This means fewer errors that might lead to incorrect approvals or denials, and greater client satisfaction.

Collectively, these abilities can transform important social services initiatives. For example, they play a crucial role in a new digital platform built by the Department of Human Services (DHS) in South Australia to modernize how high-risk domestic violence cases are managed. Previously, agencies relied on physical documents and semi-structured Excel spreadsheets to track cases, which hindered information sharing, decision making, and coordination across agencies. The new Family Safety Portal, integrating AI with Microsoft Power BI, transformed DHS’s domestic violence response into a proactive, highly adaptive, and evidence-based system. Referrals that once took days are now done in real-time, and 10 agencies now share data in a centralized system that is highly secure.

In terms of improving public health and wellbeing, AI and analytic tools can collect, analyze, and report on public health or program data to gain a holistic view of individuals receiving services to improve care. A case worker, for example, can use AI to see beyond isolated data points and gain a far more complete view of a person’s situation, needs, and history. With less administrative burden, this provides critical context to ensure that the constituent receives precisely the right support and enhance care coordination and interventions.

The other essential benefit provided by analytics is in the realm of fraud, waste, and abuse. By analyzing vast amounts of information in real time and leveraging data from past records and experiences, AI can spot patterns, identify irregularities, and flag suspicious behaviors far more effectively and faster than traditional methods. This can help organizations proactively detect and mitigate fraud risks—for example, by evaluating submissions as they arrive instead of through audits, automating verification in seconds by cross-checking IDs and application details, or comparing an applicant’s behavior with previous submissions to ensure they are legitimate.

Move forward in your AI journey

Virtually any government agency can derive immediate benefits from generative AI. However, to unlock the full power of modern analytics and advanced AI, an organization needs to modernize their cloud environment and ensure an AI-ready data estate.

Every organization’s journey is unique, and it’s important to build a long-term strategy with trusted technology partners. To help your government organization take the next step, contact your local Microsoft representative or certified Microsoft technology partner. They can help explore options, identify use cases, and transform your ideas into meaningful solutions. 