A conversational AI chatbot supported by an online self-service portal; the enquiries are high volume, repetitive and rule-based, so automating the answers deflects most visits entirely and frees counter staff for the exceptions that genuinely require judgement

Robotic Process Automation; software bots would automate the rule-based capture of application data between the bureau’s systems, which would shorten back-office processing, but RPA interacts with applications rather than with members of the public, so the repetitive walk-in enquiries would continue

Big data analytics; historical queue data could be analysed to forecast peak periods and roster staff accordingly, which would ease congestion at busy times, but it manages the symptom rather than removing the repetitive enquiries that create the queue

A 5G network upgrade at the service counters; higher bandwidth and lower latency would marginally speed up each system transaction, but the bottleneck is the volume of repetitive human enquiries rather than the speed of the network