IRS Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Kaschit Pandya said Tuesday that his agency interacts with more Americans than nearly any other public or private organization and is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to improve its customer experience.
Pandya said his agency is looking to provide better services to taxpayers, and AI is one lever that helps the IRS do so internally. Additionally, he said the IRS is looking to implement generative AI to improve taxpayers’ digital experience on the IRS website.
“From an IRS perspective, AI [and] ML, we’ve been working with that for a decade or more. Most of that has been focused on data analytics,” Pandya said during a July 2 webinar hosted by Federal News Network.
“However, the new kid on the block – or at least a new area of focus in AI – is generative AI and that is now starting to come into prevalence as far as what it is that we want to do with it,” he added. “How do we want to leverage it to provide better services for our taxpayers?”
The CTO said the IRS is still “being careful about generative AI” and taking “a little bit more of a cautious approach there.” However, he said the IRS has applied AI and machine learning to aid translation efforts.
Pandya explained that American taxpayers speak many languages, and the IRS wants to provide equitable services to every taxpayer, regardless of the language that they speak.
“However, the challenge that we have had is we may not necessarily have the expertise within IRS to easily and quickly translate those languages,” Pandya said. “So, we have started and have been applying AI machine translation for languages to help us expedite the review times for our internal customer service representatives and team members.”
“We have seen some really drastic improvements. We have reduced the time necessary for translation by over 90 percent,” he said. “So, we want to get everybody up to par, especially those non-English speakers, so that we are able to provide them the services that the English speakers tend to get … now they are getting the same level of service as anyone else is if your primary language is English.”
In addition to providing translation services, Pandya said the IRS is looking to AI to help expand its digital footprint. The agency hopes to have a “one-stop shop” website with expanded features and capabilities.
“Having that one-stop shop, you don’t have to go hunting around the IRS websites or trying to figure out where you go for one service and where you go for another service,” he explained. “You have the ability to [engage with us] in a digital manner that you prefer. Whether it’s with a live chat or simply uploading a piece of document through your phone, etc.”
“Of course, generative AI is going to play a huge role in how we engage and interact,” Pandya said, adding that a “Chat IRS” feature could be helpful to taxpayers in the future.
