Technological development within information technology has permeated all areas of business and types of institutions; public institutions have not been the exception. Most applications of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or robotic process automation (RPA) have been developed with commercial applications in mind. However, governments worldwide have also been working on applications of AI aiming to improve their service levels to their citizens (see Figure 13.1).

As opposed to an Orwellian, big brother approach (Orwell, 1949) that makes governments look like wanting to take advantage of technology to control their citizens, this chapter takes a customer service approach to explore the most likely applications that governments are developing to improve customer service. Three different examples have been selected.

From the several applications of intelligent automation health care is prominent. Kalis et al. (2018) find that robot-assisted technology is one application in this area with a potential annual value of $40 billion. This application lies on the RPA category; nevertheless, other applications such as administrative workflow ($18 billion) and fraud detection ($17 billion) are more on the thinking side of intelligent automation. It is in these applications that we have been able to identify real examples of AI applications in government settings, which we describe using a customer service interactionist mindset.

When a person (customer) approaches a government institution seeking for a service, for the service experience to occur, the parties need to engage in interaction; one party acts and the other re-acts. The customer request is an act that the service provider first needs to make sense of. That is, the service provider interprets the request and responds accordingly; the customer construes the response and depending on the meaning it has given to the response, the customer responds. This exchange of acts continues for as long as the parties understand the other acts and the service experience is completed. Norms of interaction develop over time. The parties build a relationship and learn how to make sense of the other party's action and how to respond. Fundamental to relationship development is that one party trusts and considers the other party committed. Thus, interaction occurs within the context of relationship and is guided by the parties’ previous experiences and expectation of the future.