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The U.S. Federal AI Personal Assistant Pilot

Current status

This Wiki is in development -- as of Wednesday, May 3, content is still in the process of updating due to overwhelming interest from both the public and private sectors, and the fact that this is the first open source project for many of the participants. Which is a great challenge to have. We are currently processing concepts and ideas from Federal agencies and public services, and will post them to this Wiki.

If you have ideas or suggestions, please email to Justin Herman, Emerging Citizen Technology program lead, at justin.herman@gsa.gov. If you would like to be added to the wiki as a collaborator please email Justin with your Github user name and organization.

Key documents

• What you can do to help (updated daily)
• Participating Concepts (in process of daily updates and additions)
• Pilot roadmap
• Development Resources
• News and Information (updated as-it-happens)

Welcome to GSA's Emerging Citizen Technology program's pilot for the effective, efficient and accountable introduction and benchmark of public service information integration into consumer-available AI Personal Assistants (IPAs) including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and Facebook Messenger's chatbot service -- and in the process lay a strong foundation for opening our programs to self-service programs in the home, mobile devices, automobiles and further.

This pilot will require rapid development and will result in public service concepts reviewed by the platforms of your choosing, as well as the creation of a new field of shared resources and recommendations that any organization can use to deliver our program data into these emerging services.

Principles

The demand for more automated, self-service access to United States public services, when and where citizens need them, grows each day—and so do advances in the consumer technologies like Intelligent Personal Assistants designed to meet those challenges.

The U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Emerging Citizen Technology program, part of the Technology Transformation Service’s Innovation Portfolio, launched an open-sourced pilot to guide dozens of federal programs make public service information available to consumer Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) for the home and office, such as Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant, and Facebook Messenger.

These same services that help power our homes today will empower the self-driving cars of tomorrow, fuel the Internet of Things, and more. As such, the Emerging Citizen Technology program is working with federal agencies to prepare a solid understanding of the business cases and impact of these advances.

From privacy, security, accessibility, and performance to how citizens can benefit from more efficient and open access to federal services, the program is working with federal agencies to consider all aspects of its implementation. Additionally, by sharing openly with private-sector innovators, small businesses, and new entries into the field, the tech industry will gain increased transparency into working with the federal government.

While this first phase of the pilot includes read-only use of public data, agencies and providers are discussing plans to expand it in future phases. Government and the tech industry are collaborating on this pilot to improve its outcomes, however, both have the option to accept or decline the proposed concepts at any point in this pilot.

GSA’s Emerging Citizen Technology program includes the government-wide support of Artificial Intelligence for Citizens, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and SocialGov. Throughout the life of the pilot, findings will be shared, including next steps for the advancement of more automated, self-service access to public service information.