Beyond the phone tree: How AI is revolutionizing government services

Government contact centers are under increasing pressure to modernize. Citizens expect fast, intuitive, and secure digital services but most agencies are still operating with outdated infrastructure and legacy interactive voice response (IVR) systems. The urgency isn’t just anecdotal.

According to Gartner, while digital services became essential during the pandemic, many governments have struggled to sustain that momentum due to risk-averse cultures and resource constraints. And Forrester’s2025 predictions warn that government customer experience (CX) is expected to decline for the fourth consecutive year, with most major tech initiatives at risk of failure due to underinvestment and misalignment with citizen needs.

In this episode of Unlocking Vertex AI, TTEC Digital’s Steve Parowski joins host Caleb Johnson to explore how generative and agentic AI are being deployed to close this gap.

From reducing call volumes and improving self-service to automating proposal workflows, they discuss how AI is helping agencies scale responsibly through consumption-based pricing, and why FedRAMP-compliant infrastructure is now a baseline requirement, not a bonus.

From “press 1 for…” to real conversations

Government call centers have long been associated with the dreaded phone tree. But as Parowski explained, generative AI is transforming those rigid menu-driven systems into conversational ones. Instead of pressing buttons or repeating key phrases, citizens can now describe what they need in natural language and the system can understand, interpret, and act on it.

He recalled how annoying those older systems could be: “Press one for this, press two for that. That created an enormous amount of frustration… where we end up screaming “Agent!” all the time just to get to a live body,” Parowski said, describing the traditional experience.

With AI now embedded within IVR, citizens can now describe what they need in their own words and the system generates a clear transcript of exactly what the customer wants and more immediately helps them achieve their goal.

“That shift has made the ability to provide services — whether it's health and human-related services or labor-related services or tax- or road- or transportation-related services — to be much, much more effective without having to speak to a live person,” he added.

This technology not only improves access to information but also frees agents to handle more complex requests, improving efficiency across agencies.

Smarter funding through consumption-based AI

Government agencies face a constant challenge of doing more with limited budgets. Parowski highlighted how AI solutions designed around consumption-based pricing, rather than fixed licenses, make it easier for public agencies to scale responsibly.

“So you only pay for what you consume,” he explained.

This flexibility allows agencies to meet spikes in demand during emergencies or seasonal surges without overspending on idle technology throughout the year. In one TTEC Digital public sector deployment, AI-driven containment significantly reduced call volumes — with internal metrics showing up to 24% containment in early implementations.

Preparing for the Nuance transition

Many public sector organizations still rely on legacy systems like Nuance, which are now reaching end-of-life. Migrating to next-generation AI platforms such as Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI (CCAI) offers faster performance and easier tuning but requires early preparation.

“With generative AI, the tuning process is so much faster, ”Parowski said. “And we're able to use the agentic or generative part to do that tuning without having to get humans to look at lists of failed IVR attempts.”

Putting security and sovereignty first

In government, every AI conversation leads back to one thing: security.

“It's probably the second statement after ‘how does it work?' and then ‘is it secure?’ and then ‘is it FedRAMP?’” Parowski said.

He emphasized that TTEC Digital’s long history of supporting compliant infrastructure gives public sector partners a trusted foundation for AI adoption.

“We've been running FedRAMP platforms in our own cloud since2016,” he noted. “We're FedRAMP authorized. We have an impact level four authorization for DoD.”

Those credentials ensure that all U.S. government data handled by TTEC Digital’s teams stays on U.S. soil, a critical requirement for both federal and state clients.

From contact centers to back offices

While AI is transforming the citizen experience, it’s also reshaping internal government operations. Teams are using AI tools like Google’s Gemini to simplify work and save time on documentation, RFPs, and reporting.

“We're using it really effectively,” Parowski said. “And the reason why we're using it effectively is because… our years of experience gives us the ability to create a prompt that drives an AI outcome that’s very usable.”

Even small innovations — like auto-categorizing constituent emails or flagging anomalies in procurement data — demonstrate how AI can speedup internal processes and enhance presentation not only for citizen-facing applications, but for the teams behind them.

The future of public sector CX

AI isn’t just about modernizing technology, it’s about modernizing trust. Citizens want fast, accessible, and secure government services. With conversational AI, consumption-based scalability, and FedRAMP-protected data, agencies can finally deliver experiences that feel both intuitive and responsible.

As Parowski’s insights make clear, the public sector’s digital transformation is already well underway. And AI is leading the charge.

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