Future Proofing Public Sector IT with Automation and AI

State and local governments are under immense pressure as citizens demand faster, more convenient services and departments are expected to do more with less. Meanwhile, outdated IT systems are struggling to keep up, often bogged down by manual processes and inefficiencies that were never designed for today’s digital-first world.

For many public sector CIOs looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, this isn’t just a challenge—it’s an opportunity. The next generation of IT leadership is about more than keeping the lights on; it’s about driving innovation, improving public services and securing the future. And the key to making this transformation is technology: automation, self-service and AI.

But adopting these tools isn’t just a matter of flipping a switch. It requires thoughtful planning, strategic implementation and a clear understanding of the unique needs of the public sector.

The Need for Automation in Government IT

A national survey of state and local government officials conducted by the Center for Digital Government (CDG) found that IT teams often face staffing and resource constraints.

According to the survey many city and county governments have 10 or fewer full-time IT employees. These staff members spend much of their time on manual tasks, with only 20% of survey respondents saying they’ve fully automated common IT Service Management (ITSM) functions.

The tasks that often require the most manual effort or staff time include:

• Ticket triage, routing and follow-up
• Change management
• System administration
• On/offboarding employees
• Creating integrations to other systems
• Basic IT support tasks
• Data entry/redundant data across systems
• Ticket cleanup
• AD updates
• Service portal maintenance

Modern ITSM platforms enable workflow automation and integration with other systems. When you invest in a modern ITSM platform you can automate many of the manual tasks that plague your IT teams, freeing up their time to work on more complex projects.

With automation, it’s important to realize that not everything can be automated or should be automated, but using automation the right way can relieve the burden on IT staff and improve service for users.

By reducing the time spent on manual, time-intensive tasks, IT teams can be more productive and you can often reduce employee turnover caused by burned-out teams that are not being used effectively.

“Prior to TeamDynamix, we didn’t have the ability to automate things and build workflows to do things that eliminate toil and redundancy for our employees,” Mark Hayes, information technology leader at Pima County, said.

The county is investing in automation because of the value it brings to the organization, Hayes explained.

“As a government organization we get audited by the state every year and they want to know what these stale accounts are doing sitting here,” Hayes said. “Offboarding is currently a very manual process – having to review the list from HR of people who are no longer employed with us and manually revoking their privileges from all the different systems and software and disabling their accounts. There’s absolutely no reason for that to not be automated. [TeamDynamix] is going to help us a lot with this and save us time.”

And that time savings will extend beyond IT according to Hayes, as there are plans to help set up automations for other departments, “The more we can reduce toil within the departments that we support, the more people are going to buy in and understand the value of what we’re trying to achieve,” Hayes said of the county’s plans.

Leveraging AI to Improve User Experience, Self-Service

“We are seeing the same resource constraints other cities are,” Abigail Ferguson, customer success manager for the City of Madison IT, said. “We are understaffed at times and need to focus on higher-value implementations. So, anything we can do to empower our users to find the resources they need for self-service is a must for us.”

When combined, automation and self-service can be powerful differentiators for user experiences. In addition to improving internal processes, automation also enhances the delivery of citizen services.

One of the most promising trends in IT is the use of conversational AI to enhance the self-service portal experience. With conversational AI, users can ask questions and get instant responses.

Conversational AI chatbots, for example, can understand and respond to user queries in natural language. Their primary role in IT Service Management is to provide quick, efficient support to end-users by resolving common issues, answering questions and guiding users through various processes.

By incorporating conversational AI chatbots into your self-service portal, you can significantly enhance the overall user experience and streamline your IT support operations. You can also deflect tickets, requests and calls/emails from your IT help desk as conversational AI can help users resolve simple issues quickly, without having to contact the IT team. Furthermore, AI can learn from previous interactions and adapt to users’ preferences, making it easier to provide personalized service.

Here are a few of the benefits of using conversational AI on your self-service portal:

• Faster Incident Resolution – Chatbots can quickly identify the root cause of incidents and provide users with a resolution or workaround, reducing the time and effort required to resolve incidents.
• Improved User Experience – Chatbots can provide users with a natural language interface to interact with IT systems, reducing the need for users to understand complex IT jargon.
• Reduced IT Workload – Chatbots can perform routine tasks such as password resets, software installations and system checks, freeing up IT staff to focus on more complex tasks.
• 24/7 Availability – Chatbots can be available 24/7, providing users with access to IT support at any time, reducing the impact of incidents on business operations.
• Data Collection and Analysis – Chatbots can collect data on incident trends and patterns, enabling IT organizations to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.

According to a survey on conversational AI, there are four key elements for a successful chat experience when it comes to using conversational AI for self-service.

The top cited element was a strong knowledge base for content to feed the chat, which was named by 75 percent of respondents. That was closely followed by the ability to personalize the conversation with details about the customer, named by 63 percent.

Third and fourth place were ranked equally, named by 62 percent, who equally weighted the ability to present questions to the employee that drives dynamic content with the ability to automate the fulfillment of requests from the chat interaction.

Conversational AI especially benefits service management teams when paired with enterprise integration and automation. This combination can elevate chat from a glorified knowledge base search engine into an automated, action-centered channel to field requests and resolve issues.

To learn more about the benefits of automation and conversational AI check out: Reducing Ticket Volumes with Chat and Service Management for the Public Sector.