Maximus Federal’s Andy Beamon: Agencies Should Understand Differences Between AI, Other Citizen Service Delivery Tools

Andy Beamon, vice president of digital solutions for citizen services at Maximus’ federal business, has said federal agencies seeking to transform the delivery of citizen services should understand how robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, bots and cognitive computing differ from one another.

“Understanding the differences between them is important as it impacts both the citizens’ experience and government agencies navigating the procurement process,” Beamon wrote in a Nextgov article published Monday.

He noted that RPA is a scripted program that works to automate repetitive business functions and “is ‘trained’ to run through a detailed set of rules to perform processes,” while AI adopts business rules from multiple data sources to facilitate the decision-making process.

“Ultimately, AI cannot make the decision for the citizen, but it can guide them in making the next best decision,” Beamon said.

Bots leverage AI to facilitate citizen interactions and can serve as digital tools to improve citizen experience, while cognitive computing uses natural language processing, pattern recognition and other self-learning algorithms to help users speed up the decision-making process.

“Rather than clicking through a series of buttons over the phone to select the service they want, cognitive computing uses predictive algorithms to pre-determine what the user is trying to do,” Beamon added.