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Yavapai County approves one-year pilot of virtual government help desk for recorder’s office
Summary
The Yavapai County Board unanimously approved a one-year pilot to deploy a county-controlled virtual help desk for the recorder’s office to handle high election call volume, funded in part by $25,000 from Elections and supplemented by ITS; the recorder said it will limit the agent to county-controlled websites and keep transcripts for oversight.
YAVAPAI COUNTY — The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors on April 1 approved a one-year pilot of a county-managed virtual government help desk for the recorder’s office to handle surges in voter phone calls ahead of elections.
Michelle Burchill, the Yavapai County recorder, told the board the office has seven full-time staff supporting roughly 178,000 registered voters and is regularly overwhelmed during peak periods, at times seeing hundreds of calls routed to a single staff phone in a day. She described the proposed system as an “aggregated intelligence” agent that would use only content the county authorizes on its websites, including yavapaivotes.gov, and said it would provide records of questions and responses to help staff refine messaging.
"We were starting to get on the line for almost an hour. They would hang up," Burchill said. "This system will allow us to mass respond and tailor messages in real time and capture what voters are actually asking for."
Burchill said Elections Director Lauren Custis has $25,000 remaining in her communications budget for the year and that county ITS staff will supplement funding to cover the remainder for a one-year deployment to allow time to assess performance. Board discussion stressed that the agent would not browse the open web and that content and liability would remain with the county because the county supplies the answers.
Board members asked about misinformation risks and oversight. One supervisor asked where liability would lie if the system provided incorrect information; Burchill said content control and daily review would rest with county staff and that the system includes logging and transcript records for verification.
The board voted unanimously to approve action item 3. Chair Compton moved the motion and the clerk recorded a unanimous roll-call vote.
The recorder’s office will begin implementation ahead of upcoming 90-day election notices and return to the board after the trial year with data on call-volume reduction and user experience.
Speakers quoted: Michelle Burchill (Yavapai County recorder).
