Delivers secure, 24/7 multilingual assistance to 1.5 million residents across Suffolk County
Maintains an autonomous resolution rate of 45–52% and manages up to 550 calls per week in Suffolk County’s Consumer Affairs Division
Handled 874 incoming resident calls within the first two weeks and drove a 30% reduction in incoming call volumes in Suffolk County’s Comptroller’s Office
Supported the migration of over 25 legacy phone menu branches into a single, unified Google Cloud ecosystem
Suffolk County partnered with Google Public Sector and UVS InfoTech to deploy the Civic Oriented Response Assistant (CORA), an AI-powered virtual voice agent that automates complex workflows, handles high-volume call surges, and delivers secure, 24/7 multilingual assistance to 1.5 million residents.
Suffolk County partnered with Google Public Sector and UVS InfoTech to deploy the Civic Oriented Response Assistant (CORA), an AI-powered virtual voice agent that automates complex workflows, handles high-volume call surges, and delivers secure, 24/7 multilingual assistance to 1.5 million residents.
Driving a new era of digital transformation at the local level
For local governments, balancing sudden seasonal operational demands with everyday service consistency is a persistent challenge. Suffolk County, New York, home to more than 1.5 million residents, reached a critical crossroads. Operating on traditional telephony infrastructure that could no longer keep pace with their growing constituent needs, county departments faced sudden call surges. The pressure became particularly acute during peak property tax seasons. The Comptroller’s Office frequently experienced surges of more than 600 calls per day. With limited agents, average caller wait times topped 30 minutes, and more than 70% of inbound calls were abandoned.
The high volume of routine inquiries created unavoidable wait-times for residents, while dedicated county staff worked tirelessly to maintain high service standards. Concurrently, the Consumer Affairs Division struggled with a heavy influx of resident service requests using the county’s 311 system. An operational analysis revealed that 75% of those requests required manual escalation and review.
To solve these challenges and streamline resourcing, Suffolk County launched a digital transformation initiative built on a trusted foundation. They selected Google Public Sector and implementation partner UVS InfoTech to build an enterprise-grade solution that leverages generative AI. This transformation focuses directly on the county's progress toward a modern, secure technology vision that delivers automated, helpful, and actionable answers for residents.
Local governments are under immense pressure to modernize without compromising public trust. We needed an integrated stack that could scale on day one. Google Cloud's secure-by-design framework gave us the confidence to innovate, allowing us to pivot from manual, website-centric menus into a proactive, conversational data enterprise.
Hassan Ahmed
CTO, Suffolk County Department of Information Technology
Building CORA: An agentic virtual assistant for every process
To optimize local operations and eliminate backlogs, UVS InfoTech designed and built CORA—the Civic Oriented Response Assistant. Powered by Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) Platform and integrated seamlessly with the county’s existing RingCentral telephony system, CORA acts as an intelligent conversational first point of contact.
At first, we expected the AI to simply assist agents behind the scenes, but CORA has blown past those expectations by independently resolving a massive portion of inbound traffic. It fields conversations naturally without sounding scripted or robotic, giving our residents immediate access to after-hours support with remarkable consistency.
Hassan Ahmed
CTO, Suffolk County Department of Information Technology
UVS InfoTech leverages its proprietary synthetic data to create and expand FAQ training materials, ensuring CORA is equipped with a robust and comprehensive knowledge base. The assistant was trained on county laws, state regulations, operational procedures, and customer relationship management (CRM) software request trends to ensure highly accurate, standardized answers.
In Suffolk County’s Consumer Affairs Division, CORA was integrated with Salesforce CRM and civic software platform Accela to handle automated licensing checks, payment verifications, and complaint intakes. When a resident calls, CORA checks database records in real time, creates or updates tracking tickets, and provides immediate status updates.
Within the Suffolk County’s Comptroller’s Office, CORA goes far beyond standard automated responses by executing dynamic transactions.
Across Suffolk County's 10 towns, CORA connects directly with public tax portals. Residents can speak their home address naturally, and CORA accesses the corresponding portal, feeds the parameters into the Comptroller’s tool, calculates precise due amounts—including any applicable interest and penalties based on the planned payment date—and reads the results back to the caller. To ensure data security, this implementation is safely ring-fenced from internal CRM systems, using targeted information filters and explicit disclaimers to protect constituents during high-stakes property tax filing deadlines.
The baseline deployment quickly proved that CORA could seamlessly adapt in real time and handle natural context shifts. The system resolved scheduling updates, procedural inquiries, and status checks with remarkable consistency. If a request becomes too complex, CORA executes a smooth handoff, passing the live call to a staff member along with the full transcript and conversation context. To achieve these outcomes, the solution relies on a core set of advanced agentic capabilities:
- Intelligent Call Routing: Understands call intent dynamically, replacing rigid, multi-prompt legacy Interactive Voice Response (IVR) routing branches
- 24/7 Availability: Extends services into weekends and after-hours, capturing inquiries when municipal offices are closed
- Multilingual Support: Converses naturally in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole, promoting equity and compliance with local language access mandates (Executive Order 10-2012)
- Real-time Analytics: Streams interaction telemetry directly into BigQuery, powering a central dashboard that allows the IT team to continuously track resolution trends and optimize performance
Immediate operational impact and a model for public sector scale
The deployment of CORA proves how targeted, partner-led AI integrations can deliver massive speed-to-value for local communities. Rather than forcing a slow overhaul of internal systems, UVS InfoTech rapidly built the conversational system to connect directly with RingCentral infrastructure—achieving production readiness one week ahead of schedule and delivering complex routing upgrades without expanding the project timeline.
In Suffolk County’s Consumer Affairs Division, CORA consistently maintains an autonomous resolution rate of 45–52%, managing up to 550 calls per week without human intervention. This has drastically reduced manual transfers, freeing staff to focus on complex citizen inquiries and field investigations.
In the Suffolk County’s Comptroller’s Office, CORA handled 874 incoming calls within its first two weeks, directly resolving 36% of all inbound traffic. Crucially, the system immediately drove a 30% reduction in incoming call volumes during the high-stress property tax season, freeing staff from overwhelming backlogs. This integration serves as a powerful model for job enrichment, utilizing automation to absorb repetitive, remedial workflows so that municipal employees can focus on deep, high-value support and services.
Looking forward, Suffolk County is preparing to connect CORA with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, expand capabilities to support AI-assisted payment completions, and explore agentic AI frameworks for internal training in high-pressure environments like 911 call centers. By proving that conversational AI can securely support and automate complex inquiries and workflows, Suffolk County and Google Public Sector have established a new benchmark for modern, efficient, and equitable service.
Our success is the result of a clear vision paired with a strong partnership. When you combine an environment willing to invest in modernization with an enterprise toolkit from Google Cloud and UVS InfoTech, you can completely redefine what is possible in public service. This technology handles the repetitive strain, ensuring our workers walk into a more enriched, impactful day.
Doug Segall
Project Manager, Suffolk County Department of Information Technology
The Suffolk County Government serves over 1.5 million residents across Long Island’s East End, prioritizing public safety, economic growth, and the preservation of our historic coastal community.
Industry: Government
Location: New York
Products: Contact Center AI (CCAI), Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, BigQuery, Google Cloud Storage
About Google Cloud partner – UVS InfoTech
UVS InfoTech is an IT systems integrator and 8(a) certified technology company headquartered in the Washington D.C. metro area that collaborates as a partner with Google. They specialize in AI-driven solutions and cloud innovation, working alongside Google teams on public sector and commercial cloud deployment.
