Answering Employee Questions with Natural Language Processing in IRWorks

Overview

Development stage

DeployedSource: c) Deployed – The use case is being actively authorized or utilized to support the functions or mission of an agency.

High-impact designation

Not high-impactSource: c) Not high-impact

Impact justification

The output is not presumed to be high-impact and is not used as the principal basis for significant decisions/actions

Start date

2023-04-30 (day precision)Source: 4/30/2023

Withheld from public reporting

NoSource: a) No

Mission

Topic area

Information Technology

Operational functions

Search and knowledge retrieval Derived by keyword rules; see methodology

Problem the AI is intended to solve

The purpose of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) element of the IRWorks platform is to utilize natural language to respond to common user questions about IRWorks knowledge base (KB) articles and service catalogue items in the IRWorks Employee Center. This AI element is interpretive. At a high level, this is accomplished by using language models to train the agent to respond to user questions. The decision/judgement that this AI element uses is to search existing Knowledge Base (KBs)/service catalogue items, in conjunction with the user's defined access within IRWorks, to automate Tier 1 support by outputting (in natural language) answers and/or associated links that align to the customer's (natural language) query. Yes, humans are involved in reviewing the output - the AI element does not produce actionable items but produces information or links that are provided to the querying user for them to review and/or take manual actions. The population impacted by this decision is all IRWorks users, about 90K+ IRS employees.

Expected benefits

This functionality allows better understanding of user questions to direct them to better information allowing for quicker resolution of IT and HR queries and issues.

System outputs

Improve efficiency and optimize outputs for end users requesting services/information from within ticket / workflow management platform.

Technology

AI classification

Natural language processingSource: Natural Language Processing: AI that processes, interprets, and shares information in human language.

System name(s)

Not reported

Custom-developed code

No

Public source code

Not reported

Sourcing

How it was built

Purchased from vendorSource: a) Purchased from a vendor

Vendor (as reported)

Not reported

Vendors (standardized)

None on the standard list

A vendor is the supplier named by the agency. It does not identify the underlying model or AI technology.

Data and privacy

Involves PII

No

Privacy Impact Assessment

Not reported

Authorization to Operate

Yes

Demographic features

k) None of the above

Training and evaluation data

Knowledge Base Data for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) including how to guides. IRS specific 'utterance' phrases that determine user intent. Vocabulary synonyms for words or phrases unique to IRS.

Federal Data Catalog

Not reported

Governance

0 of 8 minimum-practice questions answered. A blank answer means the agency reported nothing; it does not mean the practice is absent.

Potential impacts and how they were identified

Not reported