US launches AI-powered "America.gov," similar in concept to Maldives' oneGov

The United States officially launched America.gov on Tuesday, an AI-powered platform designed to give Americans a single point of access to federal government information and services, rather than navigating dozens of separate agency websites.

President Donald Trump unveiled the site at a day-long event in Washington, D.C., attended by Vice President JD Vance and several technology and AI industry figures, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who now serves as the US government's Chief Design Officer overseeing the project.

Unlike a traditional government website with menus and forms, America.gov is built around a chatbot-style interface. Users type or ask questions in plain language, and the system searches across federal agency websites to return a personalised, sourced response. Officials say the platform draws on AI models from both Google's Gemini and xAI's Grok. At launch, the site covers subjects such as Medicare, passport renewal, student loan information and federal campsite reservations, with the ability to directly complete tasks, rather than just find information, expected to be added in future updates. Alongside the launch, Trump signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to integrate their public-facing services with the platform.

Early reporting has flagged some limitations. According to Axios, the platform's AI-generated answers still require users to verify information against original government sources, and the tool has already contradicted some of Trump's own public claims, including confirming that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, though it has since started declining to answer certain political questions.

A concept familiar to the Maldives

The idea behind America.gov mirrors, in structure if not technology, the Maldives' own oneGov platform. Launched on 10 July 2023 by then-President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, oneGov was built to bring government services scattered across different ministries and agencies onto a single digital platform, allowing individuals and businesses to apply for services, track application progress in real time, and receive completed services without needing to visit multiple offices in person.

Access to oneGov is tied to eFaas, the Maldives' national digital identity system, in much the same way America.gov is being positioned as a secure, centralised "front door" to government services in the US. oneGov launched with six government entities and 112 services, and has since expanded to cover a much wider range of ministries and agencies, including business registration, tourism licensing, sole proprietorship management, and visa services.

While oneGov functions primarily as a structured service and application portal rather than a conversational AI assistant, both platforms share the same underlying aim: replacing a fragmented maze of separate government websites and offices with a single, unified digital gateway for citizens and businesses.