IRS Hits New Milestone Amid Federal CX Priorities

The IRS celebrated its 1 millionth document submission via a new document upload tool as part of its emphasis on digital customer experience, said CTO Kashit Pandya during a July 3 webinar.

In addition to the tool, the IRS is using AI translation to expedite the review times for internal customer service teams. Pandya said the agency has reduced the time for translation by 90%, allowing non-English speakers to receive information at the same rate as English speakers.

“Our taxpayers speak many, many languages, and we want to provide the same fair and equitable service to the taxpayer, regardless of the language,” Pandya said. “[With AI] we have seen some really drastic improvements.”

Agencies are increasingly using AI to support customer experiences and digital transformation. David Larrimore, CTO at the Department of Homeland Security, highlighted three generative AI use cases the department is piloting as part of its AI roadmap. AI will aid in criminal investigations, train refugee and asylum officers, and help local communities develop mitigation plans after natural disasters. For example, AI is helping agents within the Customs and Border Protection link case information and improve search.

“One case may say red truck, another case may have red Toyota Tacoma,” Larrimore said. “Being able to apply semantic searching and generative AI to the issue, we’re actually able to provide a level of searching and awareness to law enforcement officers that we never really had before today.”

Larrimore also is improving customer experience with a new directive honing in on biometrics, single sign-on and improved user interfaces.

“We had agile, we had DevOps, we had cloud. Adding CX created that software factor as the last piece of the puzzle that the department needed to create a holistic program,” Larrimore said. “You’re going to start seeing a rapid pace in which we are looking at customer experience.”

Cooperation is Critical

Christopher Wallace, chief of cybersecurity and CTO in the Program Executive Office at Defense Healthcare Management Systems, cited a focus on collaboration between industry, government and academia to advance innovation in health care systems and infrastructure to accommodate emerging technology.

“At DOD, we’ve done a pretty good job so far and we definitely don’t want to step backward,” Wallace said. “We want to continue to innovate forward and really make sure that what we do like digitizing those patient-centric capabilities, adding that value in a safe and secure way is really what we want to try to accomplish next couple years.”