Helping states find efficiencies through an AI-enhanced, blended workforce

States today face unprecedented fiscal pressures, rising public demands, and persistent staffing shortages. Hiring more staff isn’t enough to keep pace with these escalating challenges.

Streamlined program operations require a holistic view of how people (tasks performed by a blended workforce), processes (tasks managed by people and optimized with intelligent automation), and technology (artificial intelligence as a force multiplier) can drive greater efficiency.

Blending workforces

A blended workforce model of contracted and agency staff increases program agility, injects new skills, and expands capacity without permanently increasing long-term labor costs. With faster recruitment, hiring, and training, contracted teams can be rapidly deployed to cover the most pressing program needs.

Teams and skill sets align with program needs. Contracted staff can cover more administrative tasks, like application processing and customer service. Agency staff can focus on consistently applying policies and procedures across the program and providing program and contractor oversight.

Embracing intelligent automation

While automation is not a replacement for human expertise, it’s an essential tool for an effective blended workforce model. Automating routine, repetitive, and time-consuming administrative tasks allows agency staff and contractors to focus on mission-critical work where human judgment matters most.

Customer support is one area where automation has created program efficiencies while improving the government customer experience.

Programs that use mail to communicate with people and receive supporting documents have the time-consuming and labor-intensive work of processing many envelopes and sheets of paper. Automation supported by technology like intelligent document processing allows faster sorting and routing of mail and submitted documents. Programs that meet the public’s digital expectations for engagement through mobile apps, texting, chatbots, and portals have significantly fewer hard copy documents to process and fully embrace automation for information sharing.

As human customer service agents directly interact with program participants, AI works quietly behind the scenes, analyzing caller intent, prompting agents, and providing real-time information, workflows, and turn-by-turn guidance. AI-generated call notes allow agents to focus on customer interactions and problem resolution, rather than note-taking.

AI that combines natural language processing and machine learning automatically analyzes the interactions between agents and callers. This analysis produces objective performance metrics that supervisors use for continuous coaching, resulting in faster improvements toward enhanced customer service delivery.

More options for surge support

Office of Personnel Management guidance issued in March 2025 advised that state agencies have “the discretion to determine the most appropriate staffing method to best and most efficiently carry out services for the American people.” Greater flexibility across programs like SNAP, UI, and Medicaid can unlock more responsive, cost-effective options for states. 

A solution for the difficult tradeoffs ahead

Fiscal pressures will continue to define the policy landscape, and states will continue to face difficult tradeoffs about meeting rising needs with finite budgets. Operational flexibility remains a strategic necessity.

States that pivot to an AI-enhanced blended workforce model benefit from lasting structural advantages by enabling flexible scaling of contracted staffing and automation tools to match demand shifts. AI streamlines applications, eligibility checks, and document processing, reducing errors and improving responsiveness — all within a “human in the loop” framework that empowers people to make faster, data-driven decisions.

This is a pivotal moment for public-private partnerships. Adopting a blended model not only addresses current pressures but also ensures sustained efficiency, strategic scaling, and continual accuracy improvements, delivering greater impact per dollar spent.