Back in May 2024, I spoke at thePublic Technology Institute (PTI) AI and Cyber Summit in Washington, D.C., and I was able to hear several excellent presentations from local governments around the country.

The presentation team from Montgomery County was led by Shayna Taqi. Taqi serves as Montgomery County’s chief change officer within the Department of Technology and Enterprise Business Solutions (TEBS). She has over 20 years of experience in leading strategic change management initiatives. Her division is responsible for deploying methodologies to increase understanding and adoption of large-scale innovation and technology implementations. Taqi currently leads the county’s first generative AI (GenAI) project. This technology has expanded Montgomery County’s customer service presence, allowing residents and visitors to easily obtain information on county services from a virtual chat agent on the county’s 311 website.

After the PTI event, I reached out to Shayna to interview her for this blog. My goal was to share the Monty project with the nation and the world.

Dan Lohrmann (DL): Tell us how the Monty project started. What did Monty 1.0 include back at the beginning?

Shayna Taqi (ST): Our initial website chatbot, Monty 1.0, was launched in January 2021 to help the county’s 311 team meet increased resident service demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Monty 1.0 chatbot used Zammo.ai artificial intelligence technology and multi-turn conversation diagramming in English and Spanish to fulfill resident information requests pertaining to the two dozen or so most popular 311 topic areas.

DL: Coming out of the pandemic, how did the vision change?

Despite successfully alleviating some of the increased service demands placed on the county’s 311, resident feedback associated with the Monty 1.0 chatbot was often not always positive, since it did not address all questions a customer service representative could answer. The effort to expand Monty’s database of knowledge was manual and required advanced technological proficiency, which limited 311’s ability to rapidly develop and maintain a knowledgeable chatbot. As a result, residents commented that the chatbot was too limited in scope and unable to comprehend basic phrases and requests. As a direct result of our resident’s feedback, the county’s Department of Technology and Enterprise Business Solutions initiated a proof of concept in May 2023 to evaluate the use of generative artificial intelligence technologies as a solution to these problems.

DL: What does Monty 2.0 offer today? How many languages can you support for residents?

ST: The Monty 2.0 chatbot uses generative artificial intelligence technologies to facilitate lifelike conversations with residents; absolutely no multi-turn diagramming is required. The chatbot is capable of instantaneously answering information requests related to over 3,000 311 topic areas — a hundredfold increase from the chatbot’s previous iteration. Conversations are supported in over 140 languages, including seven of the most popular languages spoken in Montgomery County (English, Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Amharic).

DL: What GenAI and other technologies are used to build Monty?

In short, a chatted request is first received and transmitted to the Microsoft Cognitive Search service via Zammo.ai workflow. The Microsoft Cognitive Search service ranks and selects indexed 311 knowledge base information, in accordance with the chatted request. This information is then transmitted to OpenAI via Zammo.ai workflow, where it is composed into a coherent reply using ChatGPT GenAI technology. The reply is then transmitted to Zammo.ai and delivered to the resident, completing the request cycle. The entire request/response process is facilitated in a manner of seconds.

DL: How can Monty be accessed? Describe the main benefits that Montgomery County residents receive by using this service?

ST: The Monty 2.0 chatbot is accessible via the county’s 311 website. The chatbot allows Montgomery County residents to instantly procure headline information pertaining to thousands of county services in dozens of languages without the hassle of weeding through pages of information or dialing up a customer service representative. Residents simply type or voice chat their query within the chat window and Monty 2.0 does the rest. The Monty 2.0 chatbot excels at answering clear and concise requests, allowing the county’s 311 customer service representatives to research and problem-solve more complex resident issues.

DL: What has been the user reaction/feedback so far?

ST: Reception of the Monty 2.0 chatbot has been generally favorable since its launch in March 2024, per analytics collected by the county via Zammo.ai feedback features. Resident feedback is automatically solicited via thumbs up/down buttons and comment forms as part of every user interaction with the chatbot and Monty 2.0 chatbot usage has more than doubled that of Monty 1.0, when comparing year-over-year dates. In general, residents have appreciated the chatbot’s improved scope and functionality compared to the Monty 1.0 chatbot; resident feedback has also been critical in identifying previously undetected defects and other feature requests. TEBS continues to learn from resident feedback and iterate enhancements to the Monty 2.0 chatbot, including improvements to prompts, workflows, knowledge base information and other back-end components, to reduce the rates of incorrect and unanswered resident queries.

DL: Can you provide a few more details on resident feedback?

Incorporating other service levels, such as 911, state and federal assistance, may be explored in the future as Montgomery County continually looks for ways to improve service delivery for our residents. We are also in the preliminary stages of revamping the county’s web pages.

DL: When your team presented at the recent PTI AI and Cyber Summit in Washington, D.C., I was impressed with how you brought your team along and let them present a piece of the project. They clearly loved their jobs and were proud of what they are doing. How did you create such a positive culture? Do you have a mix of public- and private-sector staff?

The Monty 2.0 Project Team consists of the following pros, and the picture was sent by Montgomery County:

Our sprints were intimate and involved hours of close cooperation between multiple team members to design, develop and vet chatbot components. This vetting ultimately included upward of a dozen functional testing rounds and the facilitation of a resident focus group to inform our end product. Through it all, team members routinely wore multiple hats and alternated roles in accordance with the needs and phases of the project. We continuously learned from our missteps together as a group and were never afraid to “fail forward” in the pursuit of innovations. This fusion of diverse thought and skills and openness to constructive feedback drove the project’s success — and still shows in the close camaraderie present amongst our team.

DL: What is next for Monty? Where do you hope to go in the next year or two?

From the beginning of this project until now, we’ve realized the value of continuous improvement and leveraging the operational efficiencies we made during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are extremely proud of the team’s ability to rapidly support our residents while modernizing our 311 technology and more holistically enhancing Montgomery County’s customer service delivery model and capabilities.