German Federal Foreign Office uses AI to get personal

For years, requests were processed in a way that was highly individual, depending on the department and mission, usually via email. Not only was this time-consuming and difficult, but information tended to become muddled or lost along the way, with inquiries sometimes dispatched to the wrong place.

A better-designed structure was needed to standardize answers, foster efficiency and collaboration, and proactively solve problems on a global scale.

That would mean developing a platform using artificial intelligence (AI) to gain insights into the past, present, and future – and improve the lives of the citizens using it.

Quid est facil?

In addition to maintaining political contacts worldwide, the German Federal Foreign Office promotes dialogue, focusing on such areas as development, technology, sustainability, culture, business, and science.

Given the expanding scale of questions directed at the agency, the new solution would decentralize the prior communication methods, replacing them with a central system. To avoid confusion, the platform had to be intuitive to use so both citizens and government employees could quickly familiarize themselves with the updated style of corresponding.

The solution would go by the name “FACIL,” based on the Latin term for “easily done.”

“For us, FACIL means efficient communication, satisfied customers, and a gain in personnel resources for other tasks,” observed David Genzel, counsel general of the German Embassy in Sarajevo.

In keeping with the times, this would be the agency’s first cloud-native development, an approach to building, deploying, and managing applications in a cloud computing environment, ensuring scale, durability, and elasticity.

Since 1999, SAP had been providing support across the office’s operations, and the decision was made to partner with the company to create the cloud-based innovation.

Designed to manage high demand, FACIL would be able to provide a consistent customer experience across multiple channels. 

FACIL’s foundation would be based on SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP), a suite that helped the agency personalize applications and integrate and connect landscapes throughout the uncertainty of the pandemic.

A small team of SAP consultants collaborating with the German Federal Foreign Office would create the initial architecture.

All parties agreed that AI would increase processing efficiency while minimizing the risk of converting to a new system. 

Requests could instantly be assigned to the proper processor based on topic, providing citizens with quick, accurate answers.

Speaking with one voice

Although FACIL first went live in April 2021, the platform was enhanced by quarterly releases until December 2023. By that time, it was handling 40,000 new inquiries a month.

Having processed more than 1.8 million messages via phone, fax, and email – among other sources – the solution had been utilized by more than 450,000 citizens.

In total, about 83% of requests are categorized through the use of AI and then automatically answered.

In other cases, FACIL’s AI model can resolve an issue by calculating the methods used to respond to similar questions.

Since the solution was launched, 77% of all inquiries have been closed and answered the same day. In fact, because of AI, 50% of citizen requests no longer require human interaction at all.

Without the traditional architecture and storage that was previously essential to operate this type of platform, the system can be updated with no downtime.

SAP’s Malware Scanning System scans all files before storing them.

For its creation of FACIL, the German Federal Foreign Office received first prize in the “Services Supernova” category at the 2024 SAP Innovation Awards, a yearly event celebrating organizations using SAP technologies to improve communication, as well as the quality of life. (You can learn more about what the German Federal Foreign Office accomplished to earn this coveted award by reading their Innovation Awards pitch deck.)

“All staff are on the same page and communicate…with one voice to give customers necessary guidance,” notedChristiane Kapashi, consular section head for the German embassy in Copenhagen.