How AI Is Helping Government Companies in Durham Cut Costs and Improve Efficiency

Durham County's AI journey began as a pragmatic push to be an “accountable, efficient, and visionary government,” deploying Moveworks Copilot - nicknamed DCoBot - across 30+ departments to support 2,200+ employees by automating routine IT inquiries and delivering 24/7 answers via Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow (Moveworks Copilot Durham County case study); within the first 30 days DCoBot handled a substantial volume of routine requests, freeing service-desk staff for complex work and strategic projects, and recent industry moves - most notably the announced ServiceNow acquisition of Moveworks press release - signal faster enterprise-grade scaling of agentic AI that local governments should plan for; North Carolina agencies and staff can build the practical skills to evaluate and govern these tools through training like Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp syllabus and overview, which focuses on using AI tools, writing effective prompts, and applying AI across business functions to turn pilot wins into sustained efficiency gains.

"We're working on adoption - it's ramping up, and people are beginning to use it. Has every department embraced it fully? Not yet. But we're starting to shift the culture," - Zawadi Powell, IT Project Manager.

Durham County's move to adopt AI was driven by a clear mandate to become an “accountable, efficient, and visionary government,” and leaders saw AI as a practical lever to streamline processes, cut service costs, and make information instantly accessible to staff across the enterprise; partnering with Moveworks targeted a specific pain point - service desk overload - by automating routine IT inquiries for 30+ departments and 2,200+ employees to deliver 24/7 answers and free technicians for higher‑value work (Moveworks Durham County service desk case study), while county planners and IT staff also framed the initiative as a culture change - testing adoption tactics, tightening the knowledge base, and preparing to extend automation to HR and other services as detailed in local deployment guides (Complete guide to using AI in Durham County (2025)); the upshot: routine requests become instantaneous, bottlenecks shrink, and a modest pilot can reallocate human effort toward strategic projects that directly improve public services.

"Our collaboration with Moveworks was born out of a relentless pursuit of excellence, with the goal of addressing a critical challenge: Streamlining the County's service desk operations to improve efficiency and accessibility for its employees." - Greg Marrow, Chief Information Officer

DCoBot is Durham County's Moveworks‑powered assistant that sits where employees already work - Microsoft Teams - and connects to the County's ServiceNow ITSM back end to answer common IT questions, surface forms, and run transactional tasks so human technicians can focus on complex incidents; the implementation relied on the Moveworks Copilot design (named “DCoBot”), continuous knowledge‑base updates, and the Teams + ServiceNow connectors described in Moveworks' setup guidance to integrate identity, messaging endpoints, and API permissions (Moveworks case study: Durham County public service transformation, Moveworks Teams bot setup guide for non‑App Store deployments).

Operationally, DCoBot handles routine requests instantly, provides step‑by‑step instructions or links to ServiceNow forms, and within the first 30 days processed a substantial volume of routine inquiries - freeing service‑desk resources for strategic projects - while the County continues to refine content accuracy, drive user adoption, and plan expansion into HR and other services.

"We're getting to a point where the bot is starting to do more of the transactional work, that includes providing step-by-step instructions to common IT inquiries or serving up forms for easy access and completion." - Zawadi Powell, IT Project Manager

Within the first 30 days DCoBot processed a substantial volume of routine IT inquiries for Durham County's 30+ departments and 2,200+ employees, immediately reducing service‑desk demand and freeing technicians to resolve complex incidents and lead strategic IT projects - a shift that translates into ongoing operational savings and faster improvements to county services across North Carolina.

Early results showed quicker answers for common questions, fewer repetitive tickets, and clearer prioritization of human effort toward work that requires judgment and local knowledge; Durham leaders are now preparing to replicate those efficiency gains in HR by piloting Durham HR inquiry automation using AI to streamline employee support and to scale the approach through tighter Moveworks integration with Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow for Durham government service delivery to sustain cost savings without sacrificing service quality.

Building on the early IT wins, Durham County is actively expanding AI beyond the service desk to HR and other citizen‑facing functions across North Carolina, using Moveworks' Teams + ServiceNow connectors to push automation where employees already work; pilot cases include Durham HR inquiry automation for leave requests, benefits questions, and onboarding tasks, which can convert repetitive HR tickets into near‑instant answers and free staff for higher‑value casework.

Practical scaling steps are already documented - run targeted pilots, adopt governance templates, and partner with local universities for skills development - so other North Carolina agencies can replicate results without reinventing policy frameworks (Durham agency AI adaptation checklist for North Carolina governments).

The technical glue is familiar: Moveworks integration with Teams and ServiceNow for scalable government AI deployments enables fast service delivery and consistent governance across county and state deployments, so pilots become repeatable efficiency gains for North Carolina governments.

For Durham and other North Carolina governments, the state's living AI playbook turns abstract ethics into actionable controls: the N.C. Department of Information Technology's Principles for Responsible Use of AI - N.C. Department of Information Technology lays out seven concrete requirements - human oversight, transparency, security, privacy, fairness, auditing, and workforce empowerment - and explicitly requires agencies to test systems, document compliance, and modify, replace, or deactivate any application that fails those tests.

That guidance is paired with a risk‑management AI Framework for Responsible Use - N.C. AI Framework for Responsible Use designed to align pilots and production deployments with existing privacy laws, IT policies, and training resources so agencies can scale tools like DCoBot without sacrificing accountability.

The framework (published as a living document and available in full) stresses pre‑deployment testing, ongoing monitoring, clear user notice and explainability, and staff training - so the measurable “so what?” is simple: systems that save money must also prove they don't erode privacy, introduce bias, or create unmitigated operational risk (North Carolina Responsible Use AI Framework PDF (Aug 21, 2024) - Full Document).

Durham sits near the center of North Carolina's growing AI ecosystem: the Durham–Chapel Hill MSA ranks 6th on NC's Tech Innovation Index - a nod to the region's research intensity and talent density - even as Brookings places the Raleigh‑Cary and Durham‑Chapel Hill areas among early AI adopters and research centers, with Durham listed as one of 21 “federal research and contracting centers” for AI and appearing in the top fifteen metros for jobs exposed to automation; that mix of high innovation ranking, concentrated university research, and steady tech job growth (Durham's tech employment posted a 2.1% CAGR pre‑pandemic and a 5.2% uptick in 2019–20) means Durham can pilot advanced government AI like DCoBot while tapping local talent and university partnerships to manage risk and retrain workers - so what matters is clear: Durham's national innovation standing makes it a repeatable proving ground for scalable, accountable AI deployments across North Carolina (ncIMPACT report on AI uses in North Carolina, Research Triangle Tech Innovation Index rankings for Durham and Raleigh).

“Data has three things you can do with it, measure it against other people, measure it against time, or you can measure against goals. Over time will be one of the more interesting things.” - Ted Abernathy

Other North Carolina local governments should follow a stepwise, risk‑aware playbook: pick one high‑volume, repeatable process (Durham began with IT tickets) and run a short focused pilot to prove value and free staff for higher‑value work - measure outcomes within the first 30 days and iterate; align every pilot to the N.C. Department of Information Technology's guidance by embedding the N.C. Department of Information Technology Principles for Responsible Use of AI (human oversight, transparency, privacy, auditing, workforce training) and the statewide N.C. AI Framework for Responsible Use to standardize testing, monitoring, and decommissioning; use ready‑made templates, employee decks, and policy checklists from practitioner hubs to draft governance and training plans before scaling (AI resources for local government from the Research Triangle Regional Governance & Services Joint Powers Authority); finally, leverage familiar integrations (Teams + ServiceNow or existing service portals), control data access, and empower an internal ambassador program so the “so what” is tangible: a tightly scoped pilot that follows state frameworks can validate efficiency gains quickly while keeping privacy and accountability intact.

Durham's AI rollout acknowledges clear risks - uneven user adoption, knowledge‑base errors, integration and infrastructure gaps, and the perennial concerns around privacy and bias - and addresses them with a mix of technical controls and governance: the county staged a focused pilot (IT tickets first) so DCoBot could prove value quickly for 2,200+ employees while engineers iterate on connectors to Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow and Enterprise Security & Compliance enforces access controls; content accuracy is treated as operational work, with continuous knowledge‑base updates and targeted training to build trust; and all pilots are aligned to statewide rules that require pre‑deployment testing, human oversight, explainability, and ongoing audits so savings don't come at the cost of accountability (Moveworks case study: Durham County AI rollout, North Carolina AI Framework for Responsible Use).

The practical “so what”: a tightly scoped pilot that weighs adoption and auditing up front preserved early efficiency gains while keeping privacy and reliability under active governance.

"We're working on adoption - it's ramping up, and people are beginning to use it. Has every department embraced it fully? Not yet. But we're starting to shift the culture," - Zawadi Powell, IT Project Manager.

Durham County's DCoBot pilot shows a clear playbook for North Carolina governments: run a tightly scoped, high‑volume pilot (Durham started with IT tickets for 30+ departments and 2,200+ employees), measure results within the first 30 days when the bot already handled a substantial volume of routine inquiries, and lock governance to state standards so efficiency gains don't erode accountability.

Practical steps - use familiar integrations (Teams + ServiceNow), require pre‑deployment testing and ongoing audits under the N.C. AI Framework, and invest in staff upskilling - turn a one‑off pilot into repeatable savings while preserving privacy and human oversight; see Durham's implementation details in the Moveworks case study and the N.C. Department of Information Technology's responsible‑use guidance.

For agencies that lack internal capacity, targeted training such as Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - practical AI skills for the workplace (syllabus) can fast‑track staff ability to write prompts, manage vendors, and run compliant pilots, so the “so what” is concrete: a modest pilot can free frontline capacity for higher‑value work without sacrificing control or transparency.