145 PUBLIC SECTOR human resources-related issues. Employees now have 24/7 access to help, allowing them to remain productive at all times, and the organisation has eliminated the costs of responding to after-hours requests. “Our business value assessments show that new AI capabilities are empowering civil servants to work much more productively and effectively, while delivering higherquality outputs,” says Ongena. “Using AI to automate clerical tasks and provide selfservice solutions also allows organisations to strategically redeploy call centre staff to handle complex cases and higher-value tasks. For example, they could assist members of the public who are unable or unwilling to interact with technology.” In addition, governments and cities can use AI tools to automatically analyse, organise and make sense of the vast volumes of data they capture from their expanding internet of things (IoT) networks – and at a much greater speed and scale than would be possible for humans working alone. This is creating new opportunities to optimise operations such as urban planning, traffic management, safety, environmental sustainability and more. “The city of Paris analysed traffic flows during big football games and identified that fans typically leave the stadium early if a certain team loses, but stay in the surrounding bars for a few hours afterwards if they win,” says Ongena. “Now, the city can optimise traffic flows and transportation services in real time based on how the game is being played.” Meanwhile, city leaders in Brussels used a digital twin and AI to understand how banning cars from certain streets near schools during set hours would impact carbon dioxide emissions. “They expected the ban would reduce emissions but when they simulated it on the digital twin and analysed the data, they discovered it would have the opposite effect because it would cause so much congestion on other roads,” says Ongena. “It would have been very timeconsuming and difficult for cities to gain this type of insight on their own in the past.” Digital twins running on Microsoft technology are also being used to improve urban planning in Dublin, Ireland, water management in Gothenburg, Sweden, road safety in Alkmaar, Netherlands, and more. “Using digital twins to build virtual replicas of any physical assets and analysing the The Canadian city of Kelowna has created a generative AI chatbot to guide citizens through the planning permsissions process Photo: Microsoft
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