Yesterday, 50 people answered 4000 of 196,000 calls received in one state workforce agency to help citizens about unemployment insurance claims. Each of the 50 customer service representatives was working their hardest and served 80 callers each. Fifty people working their hardest resulted in only 0.2% of callers served.

This isn’t a drill. This is real life. This is the crisis we find ourselves in due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Futurists have been envisioning ‘talking computers’ for ages and they are not just science fiction but reality today. Artificial intelligence is already transforming our daily lives. It is no surprise that the government sector is adopting this rapid technological advancement rather quickly. Governments have already begun to adopt chatbots for customer service. Chatbots are computer programs that one can talk to by text or voice and they are helping government agencies improve their speed and quality of service and citizens’ in-turn are getting a better customer experience.

In many cases, chatbots improve customer service - they can speed up interactions, reduce wait times, by way of answering queries with complete accuracy, pulling knowledge instantly from a database, and freeing up valuable time of call center agents. Chatbots are available anytime, anywhere and are easy to use for today’s digital citizens and are soon becoming an essential IT service.

The novel Coronavirus, COVID-19 has undone the world as we know it. Our relationships and interactions with the outside world and with each other have changed completely in just the last few weeks. These changes are unsettling. Will national and international borders remain closed? When will be able to resume our everyday lives or even be able to do something as simple as step out to our favorite restaurants,  bars or cafés? Will human touch become taboo?  Will our lives ever be the “same” again?

The Coronavirus crisis is global, and many businesses and organizations have enabled their employees to work from home. It is no different for state and local government agencies. Consider Seattle, one of the epicenters of the pandemic in the United States.

The National Association of State Workforce Agencies' (NASWA) 83^rd Annual Conference just concluded in Boston and, as usual, it was a fantastic event for sharing best practices and fellowship among colleagues from other states. From sessions focused on recession preparation and workforce development to the awesome experience of a full drumline, this will be a conference to remember for years to come.  

This year’s conference round-up for the national Unemployment Insurance and Workforce areas were great. Sagitec made it to many of the conference sessions and learned a lot. Most sessions were super-charged with current issues dealing with labor and employment, workforce development and Unemployment Insurance (UI) topics. We started with the NASWA Winter Policy Forum and ended with the NASWA Workforce Summit & UI Directors’ Conference, where Sagitec was the Diamond sponsor. Over 500 people attended this conference, which was the largest conference NASWA has ever held!

1. What is MVVM?

MVVM – short for Model-View-ViewModel – is an architecture pattern that takes advantage of user device capabilities and browser memory to improve application performance.

Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefit fraud is the inappropriate collection of benefits by using false information. According to the Washington DC Department of Employment Services, examples of UI fraud include:

Futurists have been envisioning ‘talking computers’ for ages and they are not just science fiction but the reality today. Artificial intelligence is already transforming our daily lives. It is no surprise that the government sector is adopting this rapid technological advancement rather quickly. Governments have already begun to adopt chatbots; computer programs that one can talk to by text or voice. This is helping government agencies improve their speed and quality of service and citizens’ in-turn are getting a better customer experience.

 The global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.3%, according to a recent report by Grand View Research. What must you know about chatbots, at a minimum? View our infographic here.