The North Carolina capital has deployed autonomous AI workers to handle municipal IT support, cutting service desk costs by 66% and resolving nearly half of support requests without human intervention.
Artificial intelligence is moving beyond answering questions in government offices to resolving IT problems without human intervention, as Raleigh, North Carolina, reported a 66% reduction in service desk costs following the deployment of autonomous AI agents from ServiceNow.
Raleigh became the first municipal government to deploy ServiceNow’s IT Service Desk AI Specialist in production, marking a significant development in the use of autonomous systems across public administration.
The deployment has enabled Raleigh to resolve nearly half of its IT support requests autonomously, while maintaining human oversight of the technology.
Mark Wittenburg, CIO, Raleigh, said: “Our residents expect their city to keep pace with their lives, and our employees deserve tools that make that possible. We’re introducing AI deliberately, building trust step by step and keeping our people in the loop. Every hour we give back inside city hall shows up in the service our residents receive.
For local authorities facing growing populations, constrained budgets and increasing demand for digital services, the results suggest AI could change how government technology operations are delivered.
Raleigh’s experience also illustrates the shift from conversational AI assistants, which primarily provide information, towards autonomous agents capable of completing operational tasks.
A growing city under pressure
Raleigh’s technology department supports approximately 4,400 municipal employees with a help desk team of just four people. The city also handles roughly 300,000 resident service calls annually, creating considerable pressure on its administrative and technology infrastructure.
Over the past decade, Raleigh built an extensive collection of IT, human resources, facilities and security workflows on the ServiceNow platform.
However, increasing demand for technical assistance meant staff were spending substantial time addressing routine connectivity problems, device issues and repetitive service requests.
These tasks reduced the team’s capacity to tackle complex incidents, improve infrastructure and develop services supporting the city’s expanding population.
Rather than expanding its help desk workforce, Raleigh introduced AI agents designed to absorb routine workloads and automate incident resolution.
From digital assistance to autonomous resolution
Raleigh initially developed Ral-E, a ServiceNow AI agent designed to guide employees through self-service processes and answer questions using the city’s existing knowledge base.
The system provides assistance across IT, HR and facilities, directing employees towards appropriate resources or specialist teams.
According to ServiceNow, Ral-E achieved a 98% deflection rate, reducing interactions requiring conventional support channels. The city subsequently introduced Alli, an autonomous first-line IT service desk specialist capable of resolving complete support workflows.
Unlike Ral-E, which primarily provides guidance and routing, Alli can independently process common requests from beginning to end.
The technology draws on historical incident records, documented remediation procedures and institutional knowledge to identify problems and execute established solutions.
Human technicians continue supervising its activities, reviewing outcomes and maintaining the accuracy of the underlying knowledge base.
This oversight is particularly important in government environments where automated decisions must operate within established security, accountability and operational controls.
Raleigh has automated more than 20 workflows through ServiceNow’s Autonomous Workforce technology.
The city reported that 98% of AI-generated incident summaries were accepted without modification, while 98% of tickets were routed correctly during initial contact.
Its longer-term ambition is to increase autonomous resolution from nearly 50% to 85% of IT support requests.
Achieving that target will depend on the complexity of remaining incidents and the extent to which additional processes can be automated safely.
Measuring the financial impact
ServiceNow attributed Raleigh’s 66% reduction in IT service desk costs to redirecting employee time towards higher-value work.
The announcement did not disclose the original cost base, measurement period or whether the calculation included software licensing and implementation expenditure.
That distinction matters for public authorities assessing potential returns. Reducing time spent on routine tickets does not necessarily produce an equivalent reduction in cash expenditure when employees remain in their positions.
Nevertheless, the reported improvements suggest automated resolution could help small technology teams manage larger workloads without proportional increases in staffing.
Raleigh’s decade of documented procedures and service records also provided a foundation that other authorities may lack.
Extending AI services to residents
Raleigh now plans to connect Ral-E and Alli to Ask Raleigh, its resident-facing service portal, extending assistance to nearly 500,000 residents.
The integration would let residents complete requests digitally rather than relying on telephone support.
“That impact will reach every corner of our community,” said Wittenburg.
For city officials, the objective is to release employees from repetitive administrative interactions so they can concentrate on cases requiring judgement, empathy or specialist intervention.
The next phase will test whether efficiency gains inside municipal departments translate into better public-facing services, where accessibility and accountability expectations are higher.
A test case for government automation
Mike Hurt, ServiceNow’s Group Vice President of US Public Sector, said: “The City of Raleigh is setting the pace for what cities and states of any size can achieve at the intersection of innovation and service. Raleigh is using ServiceNow Autonomous Workforce to put ServiceNow AI Agents and Specialists into production inside governed workflows that complete work end to end without compromising the security government agencies rely on. That’s the hybrid workforce of the future: AI and people working side by side to deliver mission results.”
Raleigh’s deployment provides a compelling example of how autonomous AI can transform government operations, combining greater efficiency with established safeguards for accountability, oversight and service quality.
The city’s reported savings demonstrate the potential for AI-enabled government services to reduce operational costs, improve productivity and free employees to focus on more complex tasks.
As Raleigh prepares to extend automation beyond internal IT support into services used directly by residents, its experience could provide a blueprint for other local authorities seeking to modernise public services, improve accessibility and deliver better outcomes at scale.
