The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., is leading the way in transforming public service delivery through the strategic deployment of Granicus’ Government Experience Agent (GXA). Under the leadership of Crystal Sprague, director of performance and innovation, the county embraced generative AI not as a one-time tech solution, but as an enterprise-level investment in citizen experience, operational efficiency and long-term innovation.
SITUATION
As the most diverse county in Kansas, with nearly 31 spoken languages, the unified government faced mounting service demands with limited staff capacity. The organization receives more than 310,000 calls annually, yet only 20 percent are handled directly by its five-person 311 call center. The remaining 80 percent are routed to other departments, many of which have to pull front-line staff from core duties to manage the overflow. The Treasury Department alone had to reassign 3.5 staff positions to answer the 70,000 calls it receives per year, many of which are routine inquiries like office hours and appointment scheduling.
The unified government also needed to support after-hours service, multilingual access, and ensure consistent, accurate information delivery — all while maintaining trust, transparency and a high level of customer service.
“We have calls that span multiple topics, and the call center staff cannot be experts in everything. So, there are lots of sheets of papers, lots of PDFs, lots of investigation on the website to get to an answer for a citizen when they call in on some of those more unique topics,” said Sprague. “It is difficult to get a level of consistency.”
SOLUTION
The unified government partnered with Granicus to implement GXA, a public sector-tuned, AI digital agent powered by AWS capable of providing 24/7 multilingual support, answering routine questions specific to Treasury and Motor Vehicle topics, and soon able to guide residents through services.
“We chose to use Granicus’ Government Experience Agent because we know that we can curate and optimize that content so that the answers the agent gives are consistent, reliable and current. If we’ve got a new press release that comes out, the agent can pull that and have the most up-to-date information probably before it can be emailed to the 311.”
But standing up GXA wasn’t just about flipping a switch; it was a deliberate, cross-functional process involving multiple stakeholders and a team of experience specialists from Granicus helping at every step.
Organizational readiness
- A governance model was established, bringing together IT, communications, business units and executive leadership to ensure long-term sustainability.
- With the support of County Treasurer Andrea Vinyard, the Treasury Department was selected for the pilot due to its high call volume, visibility and alignment with the county’s goals.
- Staff were trained not only about how the agent works, but how to curate and manage content to ensure accurate, trustworthy responses.
- The cross-disciplined team played a key role in shaping tone, language and user adoption strategies.
- A safe space was created for experimentation, allowing teams to test responses, refine content and iterate before going live.
- Responses were scored against a set of more than 400 predefined questions developed through insights gleaned from more than 30 billion digital interactions across Granicus’ platform each year.
- Testing results were turned into concrete recommendations and an action plan to ensure rapid iteration.
Why they chose GXA
With more commercial AI tools appearing every day, the county had a lot to consider when picking the right solution for them. Ultimately, Sprague said they chose GXA because of its utility, strong governance and the partnership with Granicus that ensures the solution is optimized to serve the county.
“This is a platform more than a technology. It’s an investment more than a purchase. This is an enterprise-level solution that needs enterprise-level governance,” she said. “I’m glad that we have taken our time with this deployment and we’ve done adequate testing, with the support of the Granicus team all the way through.”
With GXA, the unified government got:
- Enterprise-level solution: Not just a quick chatbot fix, but a strategic, enterprisewide investment in citizen experience and operational efficiency. GXA integrates with the county’s Service Cloud solution to add a conversational layer to existing service delivery, information access, communications and workflows.
- Multilingual and scalable support: A solution able to serve more than 30 languages and scale across departments.
- Partner approach: Not just a tech handoff, but a deep collaboration across departments focused on long-term success through change management, governance and hands-on support.
- Best practice content recommendations: Instead of asking the government to figure out what to improve, Granicus delivered a ready-to-follow action plan, making it easier to iterate quickly and confidently, and reducing the cognitive burden on the county team. This approach allowed internal teams to focus on execution rather than strategy, saving time and reducing complexity.
- Accuracy and trust: GXA delivers consistent, reliable and current answers — curated from trusted sources and scored using learnings from Granicus’ deep understanding of government-resident interactions.
- Human testing: Engaged front-office staff to capture real-world questions and ensure relevance. Then, tested responses and encouraged experimentation and iteration in a safe testing environment before the public launch.
- Training and empowerment: Staff trained to curate content and manage tone, language and adoption. Also, accelerated knowledge for staff by simplifying understanding of services through GXA answers.
RESULTS
Though early in its rollout, GXA is already building excitement among the unified government’s staff.
“I heard, ‘This is so cool!’ and ‘Wow, how does it know that?’ They are excited and can see the potential win unfold,” Sprague said. With GXA now launching to the public, the unified government is anticipating significant benefits, including:
- Operational efficiency: Staff can focus their time on more complex issues while routine inquiries are handled by the agent.
- Cost savings: Reducing call volume by even 30 percent could save thousands in operational costs and additional staff.
- Enhanced customer experience: Residents gain access to consistent, accurate information anytime, anywhere.
- Scalable model: Showcasing the Treasury Department’s success will set the stage for expansion into other departments like the Municipal Court and Permitting.
GXA allows residents to self-serve in answering some of those more common questions, while the expertise of the staff that we have is really focused on those deep, complex issues that might cause that third, fourth, fifth call into the office.
Crystal Sprague, Director of Performance and Innovation, Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan.
GXA, powered by AWSGovernment
Experience Agent (GXA), powered by AWS, helps governments meet residents 24/7 with intelligence, accuracy and simplicity. GXA uses AWS Cloud Infrastructure — including Amazon Bedrock — to provide residents with instant access to jurisdictionally accurate information delivered in plain, conversational language. GXA uses Amazon Relational Database Services — including Aurora PostgreSQL 16.4 and Amazon KMS — to provision each customer with a dedicated, isolated database, ensuring data is never shared or impacted by other tenants. Bedrock also provides strong, government-grade safeguards to block inappropriate interactions that would undermine trust.
