Reimagining Unemployment Response

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced major disruption into the way we work, live and interact with government, but not all those changes were negative. Today, many governments are looking to continue the technological disruption the pandemic instigated — rethinking how they go about delivering citizen services and evolving their systems to meet tomorrow’s needs, as well as today’s. Case in point is the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, or DWD which partnered with Google Cloud late last year following a major influx of applications to tap AI with the aim to speed the processing of unemployment claims as well as improve accuracy and reduce fraud. On this episode of AI: Gov Reimagined, Denise Winkler, Strategic Business Executive for Global Public Sector at Google Cloud and Amy Pechacek, Secretary-designee for the Wisconsin DWD, talk about that project, the department's plans to continue overhaulng its unemployment response and how AI can continue to disrupt and improve citizen experiences.