Find the office
Identify the state, local, or federal office that handles the issue and link to its official contact page, form, or procedure.
AI Citizen Assistance Pilot
Government should be easier to use.
Ask Hope would help Rhode Islanders find the right office, understand official information, organize their facts, and prepare clear requests—at any hour and without needing an insider.
This page describes a proposed public-service pilot. Ask Hope is not yet a live government service.
One clear front door to Rhode Island government.
Every answer should show its source and say when a person needs to take over.What Ask Hope would do
Help people move from confusion to a usable next step.
The tool would work from verified government sources, structured intake questions, and subject-matter review for each area included in the pilot. It would not invent an office, a deadline, or a legal conclusion.
Explain the process
Translate published instructions, forms, rules, and statutes into plain language while preserving links to the original sources.
Prepare the request
Ask focused questions and produce a first draft of a complaint, APRA request, appeal, assistance request, or supporting-document list.
Escalate responsibly
Recognize urgent, dangerous, or highly individualized matters and direct the resident to a trained person or emergency resource.
Illustrative preview
Choose a common problem.
The buttons below demonstrate the proposed workflow. They do not submit information or provide a live legal answer.
Proposed output
A tailored records-request draft and submission checklist
A guided process
Ask only what is needed to get the person moving.
Residents should be able to stop, save their work, review every source, and decide whether to submit the resulting document.
- 1
Describe the problem
Use ordinary language. No agency name or legal vocabulary is required.
- 2
Answer focused questions
Hope asks for the facts needed to distinguish one office or process from another.
- 3
Review the sources
The answer links to the official page, procedure, form, statute, rule, or public guidance relied upon.
- 4
Receive a usable result
The resident gets a checklist, organized fact summary, or editable first draft.
- 5
Reach a person when needed
The system provides the correct human contact and carries forward only the information the resident chooses to share.
Useful from the first pilot
Help people comply with the law—not bury them in paperwork.
Ask Hope would begin with bounded tasks whose official sources and outputs can be tested before the pilot expands.
Find the correct department, division, municipal office, or federal referral.
Map published steps for licenses, tax registrations, renewals, and required forms.
Organize dates, parties, events, prior contacts, requested relief, and supporting documents.
Help residents direct a narrow request to the public body that maintains the records.
Locate official eligibility information and the proper application or assistance channel.
Explain public instructions in accessible language and support translated interfaces.
Public-service safeguards
The system must be useful without pretending to be infallible.
Every design choice should make it easier to verify, correct, and challenge the system’s output.
Show the authority
Answers display the official sources used, their dates when available, and a direct link for independent review.
Say what Hope cannot decide
The tool does not determine guilt, liability, eligibility, legal rights, or how an agency will rule.
Collect less
Ask for the minimum information needed, warn before sensitive material is entered, and provide clear retention and deletion controls.
Bring in a person
Urgent, disputed, uncertain, or high-consequence matters receive a clear route to trained staff or outside help.
Publish performance
Test referral accuracy, source freshness, accessibility, privacy, and unequal error patterns, then publish the results.
Keep a visible record
Residents can report a bad answer, and material corrections appear in a public change history.
Nonpartisan by design
The same official answer for every Rhode Islander.
Ask Hope would not promote a party, a candidate, or an officeholder. Responses would be based on published law, official procedures, and identified records. Political affiliation would not be requested or used to shape an answer.
An independent review process should test whether similarly situated users receive materially consistent guidance.
Build it carefully
Begin with a limited pilot that can be tested in public.
The public should be able to see what the pilot covers, how often it succeeds, where it fails, and what it costs.
- Phase I
Verified directory
Connect official agency directories, contact pages, forms, and published procedures to a searchable Rhode Island service map.
- Phase II
Drafting tools
Add structured help for APRA requests, complaints, referrals, and basic government correspondence.
- Phase III
Limited public pilot
Test with real users, trained reviewers, accessibility specialists, and adversarial scenarios before wider release.
- Phase IV
Public evaluation
Publish accuracy, referral, privacy, accessibility, correction, and cost results before deciding what to add.
The Attorney General’s role
Build a dependable intake system and tell the truth about its limits.
The Attorney General can establish the tool for the office’s own services, use public sources to improve referral and complaint intake, require privacy and accuracy standards in procurement, and invite other agencies to participate.
The Attorney General cannot direct every state agency. Broader integration would require agency cooperation and, where necessary, action by the General Assembly.
A foundation already exists
Ask Hope would organize official resources—not replace them.
Rhode Island Agencies A–ZOfficial state agency directory ↗
Government Officials DirectoryState and local contacts ↗
Consumer ComplaintAttorney General intake page ↗
Public RecordsAttorney General APRA page ↗
Business RegulationLicensing and regulation resources ↗
Business RegistrationDivision of Taxation guidance ↗
A better front door to government
People should not need an insider to find the right answer.
Ask Hope would show where its answers come from. When the tool is not enough, it would connect the resident with a person.