Customer Success
Knowsley Council Uses Oracle AI Agent to Improve Information
Access
Knowsley Council is a local authority in the Liverpool City Region, responsible for delivering essential services to communities across the borough. As a forward-thinking organisation, the Council is actively exploring how emerging technologies like AI can enhance operations and service delivery.
Knowsley Council, like many public sector organisations, wanted to explore the potential of AI. There is a lot of hype in the world about AI, but instead of simply thinking about it as a futuristic concept, the council wanted to investigate practical applications that could solve everyday challenges and provide real benefits to the council, it’s staff and those who use it’s services.
A common administrative bottleneck for large organisations, is providing staff with accessible and tailored answers to policy information. Often this information is buried deep within documentation, which makes it difficult to find.
Any solution would need to work securely, be accessible to all employees (including those without council devices), and be deployed quickly without major overheads.
Knowsley Council worked with Namos to implement an AI Agent built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), designed to respond to natural language queries by retrieving information from official policy and finance documents.
To ensure the widest possible reach, the council also made use of Oracle’s Identity Access Management (IAM) capabilities. This enabled secure access for employees who don’t have standard council devices, such as front line staff who don’t have access to PCs.
The agent was up and running within days and is fully managed by the council’s internal Finance team.
“Deployment was extremely quick – we had a working AI Agent within days. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and because it’s working so well for finance, we’re already thinking about how it could support other policy documents. With IAM, as well as accessing information quickly, we’ve also been able to reach staff who wouldn’t normally have access.” – Dave Caldwell, Oracle Team Manager, Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council.
Knowsley Council now has a working AI agent embedded within its Oracle environment, giving staff the ability to ask questions about policy information, and then receive tailored responses pulled directly from internal documents. Staff access the AI Agent through a secure link within Oracle Fusion, with the option to present it as a tile or menu item, depending on the organisation’s setup.
Crucially, this tool can now be used by staff who don’t have access to a PC. They can access the AI Agent in a secure manner from their personal mobile or computer, negating the need to rely on others to access and interpret the information.
The adoption of this technology is allowing Knowsley Council to find information and respond to questions efficiently. They are now in a position to build a case for expanding this work.
One of the standout features of the AI Agent is its low running cost. Built on Oracle’s consumption-based pricing model, the solution currently costs Knowsley Council around £6 per month to operate, regardless of how many users access it.
This represents a significant saving when compared with most consumer-facing AI tools, which typically charge on a per-user basis.
With the Oracle-based model, Knowsley gains a scalable, secure AI solution, at a negligible cost.
Knowsley Council’s initial use focused on finance and policy documents, but this initial success also lays the groundwork for AI to play a larger role in the organisation. A wide range of policy documents are under consideration for future integration, helping to remove manual document checks and reduce reliance on support channels.
As Knowsley Council’s solution evolves, a named tile within Oracle Fusion will provide even simpler access, creating a single, trusted place for staff to ask questions and get answers, no matter their role or device.
Watch our webinar to learn how we built a low-cost, high-impact AI Agent using Oracle tools.
