Automation in the age of austerity: Why local governments are turning to civic tech
After 9/11, a group of technologists who had built anti-fraud tools for PayPal pivoted to national security, working with federal agencies to streamline data intelligence. That effort became Palantir. While national security and defense contracting is an equally vital and lucrative space in terms of government contracting work, it is far from the only area where the government could be looking for help from the tech world.
Now, government technology — once a quiet corner of enterprise SaaS (software as a service) — is returning to the spotlight, particularly with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI). The drivers? Budget shortfalls, federal layoffs, post-COVID-19 labor shortages and rising public expectations for fast, digital-first service delivery. In Washington, D.C., where local revenues are projected to drop by $1 billion over the next three years, operational efficiency is no longer optional.*
One of the most overlooked inefficiencies in modern government operations is returned mail, with over 6 billion mail pieces being returned in the U.S. annually, primarily due to outdated or incomplete addresses.* The consequences of lost mail can range from inconvenient to disastrous: notices like Medicaid or SNAP renewals, tax forms, jury summons and voter materials or critical documents from health care providers and insurers may arrive past billing windows (or not at all). Additionally, private enterprises spend billions on outbound mail that never lands due to outdated addresses.
It was this problem — widespread, persistent and largely unsolved — that caught the attention of a pair of D.C.-based entrepreneurs behind a new software venture named Sapphire LLC.
After exiting two prior businesses in the private sector, the founders Almustafa El Hillo and Deron Cooper set out to identify high impact but underserved administrative problems in government. Having spent years participating in and watching D.C. government performance hearings and internal oversight sessions, one issue appeared across departments from health care to housing: returned mail. The mail was coming back by the thousands and no one had a modern solution.
Enter ReturnMail.ai, the first product from Sapphire: a cloud-based platform that automates return mail processing using AI. The product syncs with an organization's existing address book or CRM, reads uploaded envelopes, scans USPS databases for change-of-address data and reaches out to recipients automatically to retrieve updated addresses. It then syncs those corrected addresses back into the organization's system. In short, it replaces hours of manual follow-up with seconds of automated processing. The technology is currently patent pending in the U.S., filed under the provisional title: Systems and Methods for Intelligent Return Mail Processing and Address Management.
ReturnMail.ai is one of a growing wave of startups emerging with software that doesn't reinvent the wheel — it simply helps the wheel spin faster.
Governments at every level are facing personnel shortages and operational bottlenecks. Currently, agencies, public and private alike, must process each returned envelope manually. The current manual process: open it, review the undeliverable code, attempt outreach and then update records — and that's assuming an updated address is even provided. The labor cost is significant, with estimates ranging from $5 to $20 per envelope — multiply that by the thousands (or millions) of mail pieces some institutions send each month and the inefficiency compounds.
How can it be integrated into already existing mailroom practices? Currently, the conventional workflow of processing return mail is an email, text and a voice call — all sent out manually. Sapphire has automated this entire process so that an email, text and voice call can be customized to any organization with the push of a button. Specifically for the voice call, Sapphire is utilizing an emerging AI technology that can detect the tone of someone's voice and tailor its responses to better interact with the recipient of the call.
According to its founders, utilizing ReturnMail.ai cuts processing times by more than 80%, making it an invaluable new tool for large organizations and their employees alike, who will not have to spend hours tediously searching for updated addresses. While the process itself is being automated, a human will still provide oversight to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
While automation often leads to questions around job displacement, solutions like ReturnMail.ai are tools that empower teams to be more efficient and are being met with increasing interest. This is especially true in cities like Washington, D.C., where operational budgets are shrinking and the cost of inefficiency is growing. Sapphire recently began putting pilot programs in motion, with initial testing beginning with government agencies and university mailrooms, two of the many environments where return mail presents a daily operational challenge.
Many Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) firms, from call centers to helpdesks, could benefit from Sapphire's software, which it has developed with Returnmail.ai. It is the first in what could become a suite of products that automate large-scale workflows.
In the coming weeks, Sapphire will conduct demos of the product with interested organizations before officially launching it in the next one to two months. If you would like to schedule a demo or learn more about Sapphire and ReturnMail.ai, you can contact them on their website.
Discover how ReturnMail.ai is helping government agencies and businesses cut costs and boost efficiency with AI-powered automation. Learn more or request a demo at www.ReturnMail.ai.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
27 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Cole's, Clifton's, and the Jail Cafe — a requiem for Los Angeles' lost restaurants
Here we are again, mourning at yet more tombstones in Los Angeles' culinary cemetery, the last resting place of restaurants. The newest obituary is for the oldest restaurant in the city of L.A., Cole's French Dip, in downtown. It opened in 1908, the year the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. It's a place that I suspect many Angelenos had not heard of until they heard it was closing, so Cole's got a temporary deathbed reprieve because of the crush of people wanting a last — or first and last — meal there. The Original Pantry Cafe, Cole's younger sibling about a mile away, opened in 1924 and flourished on the strength of its we-never-close pledge. COVID-19 curtailed its hours, and the Pantry closed altogether this spring, two years after the death of its owner, former Mayor Richard Riordan. Its fare was stick-to-the-ribs and elsewhere kind of food that works wonders on a hangover, as did the coffee that was as thick as the meaty ceramic mugs the waiters kept filled. Also on the death notice list: La Golondrina, opened in about 1930 in Olvera Street, in a brick building that was nearly 80 years old even then. It closed its double doors last year, doomed by money and legal troubles. The Pacific Dining Car just west of downtown came up a year short of its centennial when it closed in the COVID-19 year of 2020. It was a hangout for politicians and power muckety-mucks. During the Democratic National Convention here in 2000, you could show up at 2 a.m. and see statesmen and deal-makers eating the signature baseball steak, or my favorite, Eggs Sardou. Any hope of reopening the landmark went up in flames in March, right after the Pantry closed. California, and especially L.A., were out of the nation's sight and mind for so long that we were left to cultivate our own notions of good food. The culinary mismatch between 'here' and 'back there' let the folks 'back there' believe we shot our food on the hoof and ate it with bare hands. But our cosmopolitan eateries eventually created a singular 'fusion,' with its own explosion into a thriving restaurant scene. Not all of our stars are onscreen; more than two dozen are in the Michelin firmament. Everyone has a lost restaurant to mourn. I would lay flowers at the grave of Ago, a flossy Italian restaurant on Melrose Ave. in West Hollywood, gone in 2019. I weep for its vanished gnocchi, sublime as angel farts [note: this is metaphor. Are angels corporeal? Would they even have farts? I do not know.] Restaurants have a high mortality rate; generally more than 80% make it through the first year, and about half are still around after five years. Yet so much can derail them: fractured supply chains, staff blowups, quirks of locations and traffic, social media ambushes, even the unexpected, like COVID. So survivors are remarkable, and originals even more so. It borders on the impossible to verify anything venerable as 'the first,' but L.A.'s first restaurant was likely in the Bella Union Hotel, opened in downtown in 1850 in an even older building. The first free-standing restaurant may have been the 'Old American,' opened maybe a year earlier, but it too eludes confirmation. Hard to know what restaurant food was like in that long ago, but very likely beef, the region's major food group, or mutton, with potatoes and onions and a palate cleanser of beer or wine or the local liquor, aguardiente. [A Bella Union newspaper ad 20 years later vaguely promised that its bill of fare 'shall be inferior to none in the State.'] I have my doubts that the Bella Union or even the Old American was L.A.'s first restaurant. Food was surely being cooked and served and sold in private houses and small shops and on street stands in ethnic enclaves under the Anglo-Angeleno radar. Eventually, such places did get 'discovered,' and the local gentry might have bragged that they had just found the most delish little café hidden away in an edgy neighborhood. In 1921, The Times suggested that daring tourists might try the food in 'foreign quarters,' like 'Chinatown's alleys,' whose waiters were described in stereotypes. Italian restaurant-goers were advised to ditch steak and potatoes to try 'authentic' Italian food like artichokes, and the 'peculiarly seasoned tomato sauce.' Or they could join movie stars and sports heroes for original chili burgers at 'Ptomaine Tommy's' in Lincoln Heights, which started out in 1913 as a street lunch wagon. Into the 20th century, some things Mexican were considered declasse, except in designated quaint settings like Olvera Street. Restaurants serving Mexican food to Anglo-Angelenos often styled themselves 'Spanish.' At Glendale's renowned Casa Verdugo, the food was straight-up Mexican — tamales, enchiladas, burritos — but advertised as 'Spanish' cuisine. El Cholo, on Western Avenue, just celebrated its 100th birthday as a 'Spanish' café. There are tales of Angelenos who traveled to Spain and were astonished to find that Spanish food was not, in fact, tamales and enchiladas. Cafeterias have gone retro chic now, but L.A.'s early cafeteria craze wasn't ironic or hip. They served what working Angelenos needed: standard, middle-American comfort food at plausible prices — and, for non-working Angelenos, sometimes no price at all. Clifton's, founded in the Depression year of 1931, once ran a chain of cafeterias arguably less notable for the food — beef dishes, fried chicken, Jell-o salads — than for the elaborate décor of religious dioramas, exotic South Seas vistas, and redwood faux forests. The founder, Clifford Clinton, was a good-government civic crusader, and his cafeterias' policy was to let folks eat free if they couldn't afford the tab. As a hungry young writer, Ray Bradbury made full use of that policy. What is left of this giant, Los Angeles' unofficial kitchen? It now bears the name Clifton's Republic, a weekend-only bar at Clifton's old downtown address. In the 18 decades since the Bella Union's opened a kitchen, Angelenos never lost their beefsteak appetites, and 20th century steakhouses arose as haute cuisine, with steak places arrayed along La Cienega's 'Restaurant Row.' In Studio City, Glendale, Palm Springs and Bakersfield, waiters at the Saddle and Sirloin restaurants handed diners a page of beef choices, and a few chicken and fish alternatives, printed on a die-cut menu embossed to look like a fancy gun holster. On the far end of the grill sizzle was the vegetarian restaurant. It did not begin, as you might suppose, in the hipster 1960s. The Source, on Sunset Boulevard, was launched in 1969 by a Cincinnati-born guru who called himself Father Yod. Woody Allen made fun of the place and its vibe in 'Annie Hall.' His character met Diane Keaton there and snottily ordered 'alfalfa sprouts and mashed yeast.' The food reform movement was a hit with Angelenos. The Vegetarian Café, in downtown Los Angeles, hosted a July 1901 lunch meeting of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The menu: corn soup, beet salad, baked beans, unfermented grape juice, and sliced 'protose' with lemon. Protose was a meat substitute of wheat gluten and peanuts, cooked up by the food reformer Dr. John Kellogg, the fellow whose name you know better from a line of sometimes quite sugary cereals. In Hollywood, studios tended to lay claim to nearby restaurants almost as extensions of their own commissaries, with cocktail privileges. Paramount people adopted restaurants on Melrose: first Lucey's, and later Lucy's El Adobe, which together lasted a hundred years. Lucey's opened in 1922, and silent stars like Clara Bow showed up in limos and ordered fistfuls of caviar. Paramount artists painted the murals in the restaurant's VIP room. Lucey's headwaiter Don Avalier was reportedly 'discovered' there, and screen-tested for a bio-pic of Rudolph Valentino. He didn't get the starring role but he did get other movie parts, often playing … a headwaiter. This Lucey's closed some time in the 1950s. In 1964, the other Lucy's, the fabled Mexican restaurant, opened a little way away. It too was an actors' hangout, but celebrated as the place where governor Jerry Brown and singer Linda Ronstadt met and launched their headliner romance. That Lucy's closed in 2019, the year before Covid. More than Sunset Blvd. or Hollywood Blvd., Melrose Ave. was where the stars came out, and dined in. One of two Nickodell restaurants was nudged alongside Paramount. In 1928, it began selling affordable food to starving actors, and did so even after they were no longer starving. In 1982, Nickodell's steak sandwich with grilled onion and potatoes cost $6.95, a price you could hardly afford to duplicate at home, wrote Times food columnist Rose Dosti. Each day of the week offered a special: chicken cacciatore on Mondays, frankfurters and sauerkraut on Wednesdays, and so on. When it closed, in 1993, veteran TV actress Peggy Rea mourned its special dishes. 'From here you go into the world of alfalfa sprouts.' Our big, warm climate and our wide-open spaces made possible something that earned its own genre: mimetic architecture, whimsical buildings that look like something else, often the thing that they sell. The Brown Derby restaurant didn't sell derbies, but The Tamale, on Whittier Blvd. in East L.A., sold tamales, and the trade of Randy's Donuts in Inglewood is unmistakably doughnuts. In 1927, the 'Buffalo Times' gave us an eyeroll in print over an igloo-shaped restaurant with papier-mache icicles, a merry-go-round restaurant with revolving tables, a 'bullpen' restaurant with a live bull and waiters dressed as matadors. And it singled out the Jail Café on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, where the El Cid restaurant now stands. The Jail Café set tables and chairs in 'cells' for patrons served by waiters wearing trustee uniforms, presided over by a cashier dressed as a warden. When two masked men showed up there in March 1926, customers thought it was just part of the show — until the robbers fired their guns and relieved diners of about $500. The café ship 'Cabrillo' was a gigantic mimetic. Beginning in 1903, it was berthed in Venice, if you can say 'berthed' about a vessel that wasn't a real ship. Early on, and briefly, waiters were unfortunately tricked out in white wigs and satin knee breeches, a la Versailles-on-the-Venice-canals. The dishes and the prices invited a well-heeled clientele — Charlie Chaplin, Jack Dempsey, Sarah Bernhardt. Sand dabs and halibut, still edible and plentiful there, were held in a net slung under the hull and served moments later. If you preferred food with legs, there was roast pheasant and, of course, steak. The place was auctioned off down to its timbers in October 1946. Germans once had a large presence in Los Angeles, with beer gardens, restaurants, churches, and a downtown club and sports center. But as happened elsewhere in the country, much of L.A.'s public German community went to ground after May 1915, when a German U-boat sank the British ocean liner Lusitania. So it was surprising to see that when the Second World War came around, a Manhattan Beach restaurant named Little Bavaria kept its doors open. On June 8, 1942, the restaurant ran an ad in The Times touting its 80-cent home-cooked dinners. That same night, the feds raided the place, and subpoenaed its owner, a German-born naturalized citizen, and three employees. The feds said the place was possibly an 'important listening post' for German-friendly ears, considering that it was a popular lunchtime destination for dozens of workers at nearby defense plants. If by now you're still hung up on first/oldest, I direct you to the oldest surviving restaurant in L.A. County: the Saugus Café. Best birth date estimate for this railroad cafe: 1886 or 1887, and its address is now in Santa Clarita, a town that didn't even exist then, but which rallied to save the café during Covid. Why the longevity? Because fusion, flank steak, fusilli, futomaki — tastes come and tastes go. But diners are forever.
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL)'s Figures Share Key Insights For The Economy, Says Jim Cramer
We recently published . PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL)'s shares have lost 21% year-to-date as the firm has struggled to to worries about the impact of tariffs on the American economy and on retail spending. Cramer's previous comments about the firm have mentioned these headwinds, and PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL)'s stock fell by 14% in late July and early August after it reported its second quarter earnings. The shares fell despite a revenue and earnings beat as investors fretted about higher expenses and slower transaction volumes. Cramer linked PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL)'s results with US economic performance: 'PayPal, very important. Cross border volume up 15%. That cuts to the economy being very strong.' Earlier, he discussed the impact of tariffs on PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL): 'It's entirely possible that the negative effects are one-time only and will go away as we get more trade deals, but right now, we're in the thick of it. You know what? It just doesn't feel good, and honestly, it's hard to dismiss them… [as] one-off when even fintech giant PayPal revealed slower growth in payments, blaming tariff fears. Copyright: prykhodov / 123RF Stock Photo The Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Miller, said, and I quote, 'We observed a slight softening in retail spending in the US, most apparent in areas likely impacted by tariffs.' After all the robust consumer spending we saw when the banks reported two weeks ago, I was surprised by the news from PayPal, so was the market, with the stock falling more than 8%. I say ouch.' While we acknowledge the potential of PYPL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Indianapolis Star
an hour ago
- Indianapolis Star
In Indiana, tax cuts always win while successful programs lose
Watching successful programs disintegrate due to state budget cuts is particularly disheartening. Adding bypassing investment in other opportunities to that makes it downright depressing. A widely supported dropout prevention program called Jobs for America's Graduates was expanded under former Gov. Eric Holcomb, but has now lost all its state funding. Similarly, the statewide initiative through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library aimed at increasing literacy in Hoosier children is in peril after lawmakers removed it from the state budget. A private fundraising effort is ongoing, but its future is unclear. These are ongoing programs that might fail. On top of that, there are examples of initiatives that could be created or increased to improve the lives of Hoosiers. Hicks: Braun cut taxes for businesses, but most Hoosiers will pay more For instance, at least 16 states have sales tax holidays for parents buying school supplies. It could save families a significant amount when you consider clothes, computers and other supplies needed. Gov. Mike Braun proposed this holiday, which also would have covered youth sports purchases — even putting it in his draft budget. But other priorities won out and it was eventually removed. Or what about actually increasing money going to food banks at a time when food insecurity is high? The budget maintained a $2 million line item but saw no increase despite food banks facing higher demand. And I haven't even mentioned the state employee layoffs that are happening. Recently the Indiana Department of Workforce Development laid off 15% of its workforce. And I want to be clear about one thing. The state is still seeing increased tax collections — just not as robust as expected. In fiscal year 2025, Hoosiers paid $22.2 billion in taxes — including sales, income, corporate, gaming, fuel and others. That was about $740 million more than the prior year. Opinion: Nurses are drowning while Braun ignores Indiana's health care crisis The problem is that some programs like Medicaid are growing so fast it squeezes out other worthy initiatives. There is still wiggle room though. For instance, the state could afford both JAG and the Dolly Parton program. Indeed, lawmakers created a Freedom and Opportunity in Education Fund and appropriated $50 million to it each year. It doesn't direct the money to any specific programs, instead just outlining general uses such as improving academic performance, recruiting educators in high-need areas, expanding computer science programs, reading intervention and dropout prevention. We will have to wait and see what the Indiana Department of Education and the Braun administration use that money for instead. Other initiatives — like eliminating the tax on adult diapers or feminine hygiene products — also can happen. But lawmakers instead continue to slowly reduce Indiana's flat income tax rate, which means less money comes to the state. Indiana's individual income tax rate has dropped from 3.4% to 3.05% since 2015 via a phased-in reduction. And it's scheduled to drop to 2.9% by 2027. Indiana's corporate income tax rate has also dropped. Briggs: Mike Braun is failing Indiana, yet wants to be president For several years, when Indiana was swimming in new revenue and the state was plowing billions into new buildings, paying down unfunded pension obligations and incentivizing regional development, it made sense. But that's not the case anymore. And the tax cuts are happening at such an incremental pace that most Hoosiers don't even realize it. Collectively, though, those dollars could be used to improve services, continue successful programs and generally invest in the future. Of course, no one likes paying taxes and it's easy to support tax cuts. But I am curious what the ultimate goal is and whether lawmakers will ever admit a certain level of revenue is needed to move Indiana forward.
