Massachusetts’s public-facing chatbot that searches for preschool openings on behalf of parents

In this exploration of the use of AI in the 50 states, there was no single utility that was more common than the use of GenAI chatbots, which help to answer caller questions with accuracy and speed.

Currently, many chatbots are internal facing and are used by state staffers in order to help them easily answer questions that come from the public. Few have yet used sophisticated GenAI chatbots directly for the public’s use, but a pilot from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shows how it’s accomplishing this with a chatbot that provides information on preschool openings.

This idea was sparked by a state contest in which agencies were encouraged to develop use cases. “I said, work with your teams and see what you come up with,” said Jason Snyder, the Commonwealth’s CIO. “The winning one was a chatbot that would give parents the ability to search for a preschool that meets their needs, including, for example, a preschool that could serve a special needs child.”

When the tool comes into public operation, it will do the preschool searching for the user. It will provide information based on what a resident asks for and come back with preschools that have openings. “It meets the needs you defined in your natural language request and provides information on how to contact the school,” said Snyder.

The creation of the chatbot is possible because Massachusetts tracks data on preschool openings, with individual schools sending data to the state. “This was an organic bottom up (idea), and the team came up with it. I was like, ‘I love this. This is brilliant,’” said Snyder, who has five sons and knows how much time parents spend trying to find the right school for their children. “I wasn’t involved in it until they presented it back to me at the contest.”

Attribution: Case study provided to the AI Navigator courtesy of the IBM Centre for The Business of Government, Apolitical's content partner. “AI in State Government: Balancing Innovation, Efficiency, and Risk”, https://www.businessofgovernment.org/reports/ai-in-state-government, IBM Centre for The Business of Government.