In a NASCIO 2020 panel on Tuesday, Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon said her state "implemented chatbots to move people online and off the phone."
Prior to the pandemic, Tennessee supported small deployments of chatbots, but Dedmon's customer agencies were more willing to expand their horizons and try something new to meet the challenges of providing services after COVID-19 struck.
"Agencies were coming to us," Dedmon told the panel. "They were anxious to get more services online. It expedited some things we wanted to do."
Vermont CIO John Quinn agreed that adding chatbots was the top innovation his state introduced in the pandemic's wake.
"We looked at our role as being able to do the background and research necessary. We would have a list of things agencies could do to solve their problems," Quinn said at NASCIO 2020. "There was an overwhelming amount of people looking for information, and chatbots became one of the most-used things across the agencies."
NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson stressed that innovations like chatbots proved vital in providing citizen services while demonstrating the importance of the state CIO's role.
"It's about enabling state government; it's about transformation. It isn't simply managing infrastructure," Robinson said during the panel.
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