As part of the Digital Transformation strategy that is being implemented, the National Superintendence of Customs and Tax Administration (SUNAT) presented "Sofia” (Automated Information Guidance and Facilitation Service), its new virtual assistant, becoming the first public sector entity to use this type of technology to facilitate compliance with taxpayers’ obligations.
"The citizen assistance service provided by "Sofía" speeds up the response to queries regarding orientation issues, reducing the need to go to a Service Center or call the Consultation Center to receive a response," said Mariam Valdivia, SUNAT's guidance and services manager.
The executive assured that "Sofia" represents a time saving for the taxpayer, as it is available 24 hours a day and provides an effective response in seconds, using simple language for easy understanding. "This new communication channel will improve the experience with the citizen, through real-time and uninterrupted communication; in addition to allowing us to reduce the costs of accessing that information," noted Valdivia.
He commented that the information displayed is uniform, in very simple language, and the response capacity is only seconds.
Cognitive computing platform
For his part, Cesar Gamarra, manager of Information Systems Management and Processes at SUNAT, explained that what they have acquired is a cognitive computing platform, one of the branches of artificial intelligence that is capable of understanding and emulating the human mind. "In this case, we are in this first stage implementing the chatbox that allows maintaining a dialogue with the taxpayer through text, and later it will be through voice," said the executive.
The project began in January 2017, starting with the issue of the payment voucher draw. "This had five intentions, one that had a dynamic integration, where the taxpayer needed to know how many options he had, and for that we needed to touch our database to get that data; and four that were static queries to inform about the characteristics of the draw. The second stage had to do with fifth-category returns, and the third - projected to be delivered next week - are the intentions that have to do with fourth-category income," explained Gamarra.
Alain-Paul Michaud, commercial leader of Watson IBM South America, was present at the presentation, as "Sofia" was developed using Watson solutions, IBM's artificial intelligence technology for business on the cloud platform (IBM cloud).
Source: Management
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