The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, is leading the way in transforming public service delivery through the strategic deployment of Granicus’ Government Experience Agent (GXA). Under the leadership of Crystal Sprague, director of performance and innovation, the county embraced generative AI not as a one-time tech solution, but as an enterprise-level investment in citizen experience, operational efficiency, and long-term innovation.
As the most diverse county in Kansas, with nearly 31 spoken languages, the Unified Government faced mounting service demands with limited staff capacity. The organization receives more than 310,000 calls annually, yet only 20% are handled directly by its five-person 311 call center. The remaining 80% are routed to other departments, many of which have to pull frontline staff from core duties to manage the overflow. The Treasury Department alone had to reassign 3.5 staff positions to answer the 70,000 calls it receives per year, many of which are routine inquiries like office hours and appointment scheduling.
The Unified Government also needed to support after-hours service, multilingual access, and ensure consistent, accurate information delivery — all while maintaining trust, transparency, and a high level of customer service.
“We have calls that span multiple topics, and the call center staff cannot be experts in everything. So, there are lots of sheets of papers, lots of PDFs, lots of investigation on the website to get to an answer for a citizen when they call in on some of those more unique topics,” said Sprague.
“If you think about how difficult it is to provide consistent information from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with our staff, then multiply that by tenfold or even twentyfold in the evening hours.”
“It is difficult to get a level of consistency.”
The Unified Government partnered with Granicus to implement GXA, a public sector-tuned, AI digital agent powered by AWS capable of providing 24/7 multilingual support, answering routine questions specific to Treasury and Motor Vehicle topics, and soon able to guide residents through services.
“I’ve seen how some of the quick stand-up chatbots have resulted in agents that can’t answer basic questions,” said Sprague.
“We chose to use Granicus’ Government Experience Agent because we know that we can curate and optimize that content so that the answers the agent gives are consistent, reliable, and current. If we’ve got a new press release that comes out, the agent can pull that and have the most up to date information probably before it can be emailed to the 311.”
But standing up GXA wasn’t just about flipping a switch; it was a deliberate, cross-functional process involving multiple stakeholders and a team of experience specialists from Granicus helping at every step.
“The team at Granicus helped illuminate content improvements and provided proactive guidance that was simple, straightforward and easy for our web team to implement,” said Sprague.
“They were a true partner in helping us improve our content.”
With more commercial AI tools appearing every day, the county had a lot to consider when picking the right solution for them. Ultimately, Sprague said they chose GXA because of its utility, strong governance, and the partnership with Granicus that ensures the solution is optimized to serve the county.
“This is a platform more than a technology. It’s an investment more than a purchase. This is an enterprise level solution that needs enterprise level governance,” she said. “I’m glad that we have taken our time with this deployment and we’ve done adequate testing, with the support of the Granicus team all the way through.”
Enterprise-level solution: Not just a quick chatbot fix, but a strategic, enterprise-wide investment in citizen experience and operational efficiency. GXA integrates with the county’s Service Cloud solution to add a conversational layer to existing service delivery, information access, communications, and workflows.
Multilingual and scalable support: A solution able to serve more than 30 languages and scale across departments.
Partner approach: Not just a tech handoff, but a deep collaboration across departments focused on long-term success through change management, governance, and hands-on support.
Best practice content recommendations: Instead of asking the government to figure out what to improve, Granicus delivered a ready-to-follow action plan, making it easier to iterate quickly and confidently and reducing the cognitive burden on the county team. This approach allowed internal teams to focus on execution rather than strategy, saving time and reducing complexity.
Accuracy and trust: GXA delivers consistent, reliable, and current answers — curated from trusted sources and scored using learnings from Granicus’ deep understanding of government-resident interactions.
Human testing: Engaged front-office staff to capture real-world questions and ensure relevance. Then, tested responses and encouraged experimentation and iteration in a safe testing environment before the public launch.
Training and empowerment: Staff trained to curate content and manage tone, language, and adoption. Also, accelerated knowledge for staff by simplifying understanding of services through GXA answers.
Though early in its rollout, GXA is already building excitement among the Unified Government’s staff.
“I heard ‘This is so cool!’ and ‘Wow, how does it know that?’ They are excited and can see the potential win unfold.” Sprague said.
With GXA now launching to the public, the Unified Government is anticipating significant benefits, including:
“We need to be able to utilize the limited resources we have the most effectively,” said Sprague.
Government Experience Agent (GXA), powered by AWS, helps governments meet residents 24/7 with intelligence, accuracy, and simplicity. GXA uses AWS Cloud Infrastructure — including Amazon Bedrock — to provide residents with instant access to jurisdictionally accurate information delivered in plain, conversational language. GXA uses Amazon Relational Database Services — including Aurora PostgreSQL 16.4 and Amazon KMS — to provision each customer with a dedicated, isolated database, ensuring data is never shared or impacted by other tenants. Bedrock also provides strong, government-grade safeguards to block inappropriate interactions that would undermine trust.
