Chatbots

Two Years of Federal Student Aid’s Virtual Assistant Lead to Lessons Learned and a Clear Vision of the Work Ahead

Education’s FSA team behind Aidan® shares what they’ve learned over the past two years to help drive improvements and expand the product to a wider range of users.

Laura Nadel

Christine Wilkes

May 02, 2022

RPA

Assessing the State of Federal Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

The 2021 State of Federal Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Report describes the growth and maturity of federal RPA programs to convey agency progress in digital transformation and automation.

Gabrielle Perret

Jan 26, 2022

Artificial Intelligence

Using Chatbots To Improve Customer Experience

Three federal teams showcase their success using chatbots to improve customer satisfaction, increase availability, and empower their users to accomplish tasks faster.

Ruxi Giura

Apr 07, 2021

Video

How Chatbots Can Improve Customer Experience

Come see how various agencies have successfully deployed chatbots/AI to interact with the public and foster collaboration between teams!

Ammie Farraj Feijoo

Abraham Marinez

Marietta Jelks

Feb 23, 2021

Customer Experience

Federal Student Aid’s New Virtual Assistant Offers Model for Improved Customer Service in Government

Aidan, Federal Student Aid’s new virtual assistant, gives customers instant responses to questions about financial aid, loan balances, repayment plans, where to find pages on StudentAid.gov, how to identify their loan servicers, and more, without having to contact a call center.

Abraham Marinez

Dec 07, 2020

The Data Briefing: How to Build a Chatbot in a Weekend

As chatbots have become more popular, some online sites will let you create a chatbot with little or no programming.

Bill Brantley

Sep 27, 2017

The Data Briefing: How Blockchain’s Future Growth Will Affect Federal Agencies

Blockchains are an innovative technology which promises to radically change how society conducts business. It will take significant changes in organizational processes before agencies can begin to support blockchains.

Bill Brantley

Sep 13, 2017

The Data Briefing: The Arrival of Generation Z into the Federal Government. And Generation A?

In the last national election, the earliest born members of Generation Z voted for the first time. In 2019, the American workforce will see the influx of tens of millions of Gen Zers who, according to some researchers, will be a stark contrast to the Millennials that will make the largest part of the 2020

Bill Brantley

Jun 21, 2017

The Data Briefing: the Promise – and Perils – of Artificial Emotional Intelligence

People are quick to treat computer programs as being more aware than computer code could be. However, can computer programs – especially chatbots – have a significant effect on people? Especially people suffering from depression or anxiety? A recent academic study shows some promising results from using a chatbot as a complement to a human therapist.

Bill Brantley

Jun 14, 2017

The Data Briefing: How to Best Prepare Federal Government Datasets for Chatbots

Forbes magazine recently ran an article showcasing six handy mobile apps that were built using federal government open data. The apps range from the Alternative Fueling Station Locator to ZocDoc (a doctor locator). What I especially like about the Forbes article is that the author describes the federal government data sets behind each app. There

Bill Brantley

May 10, 2017

Buzzwords for 2017

Along with the New Year comes new buzzwords. Here are some that you are certain to hear about and see this year. Chatbot Short for ”chat robot,” a chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation, or chat, through artificial intelligence. They are commonly found on web sites and used to communicate with a person—you might have seen them

Christen Geiler

Mar 16, 2017

DigitalGov University in Review: 2016 Training Trends

DigitalGov University (DGU), the events platform for DigitalGov, provides programming to build and accelerate digital capacity by providing webinars and in-person events highlighting innovations, case studies, tools, and resources. Thanks to your participation, DGU hosted over 90 events with 6,648 attendees from over 100 agencies across federal, tribal, state, and local governments.

Janelle Thalls

Jan 11, 2017

Are Chatbots the Next mHealth Frontier?

In April, Facebook made it possible for organizations to use chatbots to send and receive messages from users of Facebook Messenger. That’s a big deal. Facebook Messenger is now used by 900 million people every month. As the name implies, it’s a messaging platform that people use to send short messages to each other through

Lindy Dreyer

Torey Vanek

Nov 17, 2016

The Data Briefing: Help Predict the Future of Federal Government Data

In December, I plan to write two postings detailing a scenario analysis for the next ten years of the Federal government’s data technologies. Governments are on the cusp of amazing technological advances propelled by artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, and the Internet of Things. Also, governments will face new challenges such as the recent global cyber

Bill Brantley

Oct 26, 2016

The Data Briefing: Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment the Work of Frontline Government Employees

You have probably read about the recent release of the White House’s report on using artificial intelligence (AI). As with previous technologies, AI holds much promise in the areas of education, commerce, criminal justice, the environment—almost all aspects of the American public’s life. AI also poses a danger if it is not properly managed and

Bill Brantley

Oct 19, 2016

Trends on Tuesday: The Digital Interface — Without a Face — Is Coming Fast

The seemingly sci-fi world envisioned in the movie Her is very close to becoming our reality. Several new developments merging hardware, artificial intelligence technology, chatbots and persistent audio assistants are now available, with software developer kits to expand the platforms. Amazon was first to market with their Echo device, and since have added the Echo

Will Sullivan

Oct 18, 2016

No Longer an Idea of the Future, Artificial Intelligence Is Here and You Are Probably Already Using It

It might surprise some of you to know that artificial intelligence (AI) is already in use and a routine part of our daily lives, but we leverage this technology when we use our smartphones or other devices to ask Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Now, or Amazon’s Alexa a question to get the facts or data we

Christen Geiler

Sep 15, 2016

The Data Briefing: I, For One, Welcome Our New Chatbot Blockchain Digital Autonomous Organizations

It is at the intersections of fields where you find the most fascinating and innovative concepts. Recently, a conference on “Open Human Resources and the Cognitive Era” explored the use of chatbots and blockchain technologies in human resources. Human Resources (HR) is quietly undergoing a revolution as many HR practitioners are transforming HR by using

Bill Brantley

Jul 06, 2016

The Data Briefing: Better Crowdsourced Federal Government Projects Through Cognitive Computing

Cognitive computing has been receiving a good deal of attention lately as more companies have been building intelligent agents. Ever since IBM Watson’s 2011 appearance on Jeopardy, cognitive computing has spread into healthcare, investing and even veterinary medicine. However, it is only recently that cognitive computing has spread into government applications. As the name implies,

Bill Brantley

May 25, 2016

The Data Briefing: Chatbots and the Rise of Conversational Commerce and Citizen Experience

Ten months ago, I wrote about the rise of the post-app world in which mobile personal assistants would do the work of five to 10 apps combined. These mobile personal assistants, now known as chatbots, would work through conversational interfaces (voice and instant messaging, for example). The idea is to build more natural interfaces for people

Bill Brantley

Apr 20, 2016

News and Events on Chatbots