Centric Burgerzaken (Centric), a leading IT services provider based in the Netherlands, will expand its portfolio of digital services to enhance citizen engagement and communication with local governments in the Netherlands. The provider already offers a broad range of digital services for local governments and will also integrate Amelia’s market leading Conversational AI solution to provide round-the-clock assistance and humanise its citizen-facing services.
This implementation underpins how Centric is adapting to evolving citizen expectations and the increasing demand for high-quality, 24/7 services. Amelia, The Most Human AI will communicate to citizens seamlessly using Natural Language Processing, understand different languages and accents and switch contexts between conversations. Instead of filling out long forms to process marriage or birth certificates in-person at a town hall, Amelia will support citizens in carrying out these requests online, via text or voice.
By digitising more services, Centric will increase service speed and efficiency while remaining customer-oriented. Citizens can choose when, how and where they want to complete applications and Amelia will keep them updated throughout the process. In addition, Amelia will remove some of the workload from local government workers so they can focus on higher level, strategic projects.
During this deployment, Centric will collaborate with the government’s common ground chatbot initiative (GEM), to ensure the Amelia implementation is complementary to existing services. Alongside the GEM, Amelia will strengthen communication with citizens and elevate citizen service provision to an even higher level.
Following the successful integration of Amelia in a select number of local government municipalities, Centric plans to expand the technology to all of its local government customers, serving approximately 10 million Dutch citizens. The goal is for Amelia’s self-learning algorithms to enable municipalities to quickly and easily deploy Amelia as a pre-trained digital civil servant who works collaboratively with existing local government services.
Maarten Hillenaar, CEO of Centric Public Sector Solutions said: “Our partnership with Amelia will enable local government organisations to better connect with citizens, through streamlined, automated communications and boost citizen engagement throughout the country. In today’s digital world, citizens now expect the same level of service from their local authority as they do from their bank or online retailer. With Amelia, potentially millions of Dutch citizens will now have an unparalleled digital experience for public sector processes and applications.”
Chetan Dube, Founder & CEO of Amelia said: “Compared to some others, the public sector is typically cautious to adopt new technologies, but there is huge untapped potential for government organisations to drive economic and societal benefits with Conversational AI. By partnering with Centric, our aim is to help the Netherlands become a world leader in digital public services and showcase the importance of AI in promoting citizen participation and engagement.”
