Raleigh Deploys AI Agent to Assist City IT Help Desk
Raleigh has introduced an agentic AI bot named Alli to help its four-person IT service desk support about 13,000 devices and 4,400 staff. The city co-developed the tool with ServiceNow, and officials say it can resolve some issues instead of only pointing users to instructions. Raleigh is the first city government to use ServiceNow's IT Service Desk AI Specialist, with the CIO hoping to eventually extend similar capabilities to the Ask Raleigh resident portal.
Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital, has added an AI agent called Alli to its IT service desk. The four-person team supports about 13,000 devices and 4,400 employees. Alli is an L1 IT Service Desk AI Specialist, co-developed with ServiceNow. Raleigh is reportedly the first city government to deploy this ServiceNow offering.
The city’s CIO, Mark Wittenburg, helped advise ServiceNow on agentic tools and wants to adapt similar assistance for Ask Raleigh, a resident portal serving roughly 500,000 people. ServiceNow’s Mike Hurt said Raleigh offered a live production setting that a lab could not match. The city trained and verified the bot gradually.
Raleigh’s experiment may affect city employees and residents by speeding IT fixes and freeing scarce staff, while raising questions about oversight, reliability, and access for those who need human help. If similar agents reach Ask Raleigh, residents could get faster answers, but may also encounter automated decisions or limits in complex cases. Other local governments could watch this partnership as a model, though results may depend on testing, transparency, and how automation supplements staff.