As a prime contractor at the CityFront AI (CFAI), a Texas based innovation company that provides end-to-end Smart City solutions for the Texas State and Local authorities.

Team SynapOne implemented highly complex and innovative solution

Team SynapOne implemented highly complex and innovative solution

That offers multitude of city-wide managed services using Image Recognition, NLP, AI/ML and RPA technologies through a unified app called One App. In this enterprise system, some critical challenges we had to overcome were disparate data sources, large pool of user base (end users, internal auditors, inspectors, city and state external users, etc.), multiple data formats, data latency and ensuring real time workflows performance is in milliseconds, and data exchange with several stakeholders securely.

Following are the components that utilized the power of RPA to automate repetitive functions to create efficiencies that greatly benefitted the agencies and citizens

Smart Permits

Smart Permits

Provides a platform for citizens to submit permit applications. The citizens are required to provide basic information like Name and Address and the automated Blue Prism BOTS access all the agency databases including ESRI to collect all the pertinent permitting information like tax record, land parcel ID’s, zoning information etc. to complete the application on behalf of the applicant. Following is the representation of a Residential Remodeling Permit form filled by the Blue Prism BOT. The left image is an image of a blank form prior to accepting basic information like name and address and the right image is an image after a BOT has processed the request. The image in the center is the Smart Permit iOS app that accepts the basic information required for processing

Unified Bill Pay

Unified Bill Pay

The purpose on this application was to provide a single platform for payment and consolidation of all the bill pay activity by citizens. Based on users account setup this app would access billing data across multiple agencies. The Blue Prism BOTS would spawn multiple workflows to collect billing information on a daily basis. Depending on account setup and permissions the app had functionalities like AutoPay, Alert generation and emailing/efax. With this app citizens were setup to instantly pay your water bill, tuition, meal plan, traffic fines, library fines, permit fees, etc. Following is a representation of a user activating a digital worker via a voice command for payment of his water bill.

Smart FOIA

Smart FOIA

Texas state government offices spent an inordinate amount of time processing FOIA requests from citizen for various reasons. Majority of the information was easily available by accessing the court systems various databases. We implemented a set of digital workers that accessed relevant systems based on the type of FOIA. The BOTs were also trained to redact sensitive information based on certain predefined rules. This RPA solutions has reduced FOIA processing time by over 90%, the FOIA staff was upskilled or reassigned by the cities to various analytical programs to harness their institutional knowledge. The citizen engagement has significantly increased on the app which has provided cities additional avenues for creating efficiencies across various programs.

Following are some of the other initiatives that SynapOne is engaged in with CFAI.

  • Remote Virtual Inspection
  • Smart Parking
  • Real-time Visual Voice & Sign Language Interpretation

SynapOne implemented and manage the cluster of cloud storage based on government’s data access requirements. Here the replication of the user data to multiple clouds was performed on a real time basis. Based on data sources, data dissemination, and user needs for level of data access needed we implemented multi cloud architecture. This strategy was also recommended to mitigate permanent loss of data from a single cloud implementation. Below listed are some key services and modules provided by the app in a secure Multi Cloud Azure, Salesforce, and AWS environments

Enlarge Image

Enlarge Image

Following security, privacy and access related criteria were addressed.

  • Authentication and Authorization managed using LDAP services to provide hierarchical and organizational level permissions.
  • Compliance and legal risks to ensure PII and FISMA security controls are managed.
  • User Controls and Policies to verify and update user accounts regularly. Policies to restrict, revoke, and/or promote access and permissions.
  • Data access, storage, in-transit, and archiving policies and procedures
  • Application protection. Creating and managing Workflow-centric policies as well as implementing centralized management across distributed workload instances.
  • Data protection. Sensitive data were stored On-Prem. In addition, decrypted and masked data copies were stored on cloud with super admin access using PKI keys only. Access to such data were only through stringent approval workflow, accompanied by monthly audits.
  • Data export security measures to ensure no PII data are saved, exported, emailed, or used in different format e.g. PDF. For which email attachments are scanned during transmission in real time.
  • Security Standards for infrastructure, network, availability, and data reliability.
  • Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to implement secured cloud based compliant architecture. Including dedicated
  • Cloud instance replication with agreed reliability and SLAs
  • Dedicated connect line for PROD environment that provides access to only trusted IP address, Admin access key, for highly sensitive data transfer.
  • Settings and Configurations to ensure data storage, replication, and encryption.
  • Isolation failure. Multi-tenancy and shared resources are defined with the use of public cloud usage.