Aberdeen City Council’s chatbot answers twice as many queries

Aberdeen Town Hall became Scotland’s first local authority with a virtual assistant when it launched its AB-1 chatbot with Microsoft in 2020.

The council, which is committed to embracing technology to create positive change, has continued to innovate. It wanted to further improve the delivery of public services, while adapting to increasing pressures on local authorities across the country.

Now it has released an improved version of AB-1 in Azure, which has helped him optimize and scale the chatbot. New generative AI capabilities also mean it can understand more complex questions and respond with more detailed answers.

Renew the digital gateway to municipal services

AB-1, which allows citizens to have assistance 24 hours a day, addresses queries on topics such as garbage collection, term dates and municipal taxes. The council also has an internal version of AB-1, which answers questions about topics such as salaries and annual leave for the council’s 8,000 employees. An improved version of this internal chatbot will be available soon.

And while the original chatbot reduced the number of calls and emails to council, freeing up staff for more meaningful, in-person work, the latest version of AB-1 is driving even greater efficiencies.

“Early tests show that AB-1 now answers twice as many questions and we expect volumes to increase,” says Andy MacDonald. Executive Director of Ccorporate Services in the town hall. “Customers can now get most of their answers online.”

Aberdeen City Council chatbot training with new generative AI technology

Chatbots require training to help them understand human language, learn to perform specific tasks, and understand how to respond to queries in the correct way.

Microsoft supported the Aberdeen developers during the creation of the original AB-1. He is now helping the council optimize and develop training for the updated chatbot, using Co-pilot study. The team is also making sure the chatbot’s feedback mode is enabled, so it can continue to analyze and learn from past interactions.

“The newly available generative AI capability of Copilot Studio was leveraged to train the latest AB-1,” explains MacDonald. “Microsoft led the initial build of the first version of the new AB-1, and the Aberdeen developer team worked with Microsoft to ensure they can lead additional improvements.” The new chatbot draws on knowledge from Aberdeen City Council and uses generative AI training to ensure the correct data is indexed. This means that the virtual assistant can provide appropriately informed and focused help, rather than more generic answers.

There are plans to give the new AB-1 access to even more data sets, such as service history and geographic location, which could help the chatbot provide even more complete and accurate responses. These would be designed in accordance with the principles of ethical use of AI.. The council hopes the chatbot will eventually be able to anticipate questions and respond with proactive suggestions.

Working towards a polyglot chatbot

W.hen The launched AB-1 featured a unique ability to answer some basic questions in Doric, the regional dialect. The council is now finalizing a next edition with an improved understanding of Doric, which will also be able to support several other languages. These will include some of the most widely spoken languages ​​in the area, such as Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Russian.

“The next version will allow you to answer questions in Doric and provide answers in English,” says MacDonald. “But for other languages, translation services will be used to translate both the incoming request and the chatbot response. “We are focusing on the common languages ​​of the area, but many more languages ​​can be used.”

Aberdeen City Council and Microsoft look to the future

Aberdeen City Council and Microsoft have worked closely to prioritize innovation. More versions of AB-1 will follow, along with other technology implementations designed to simplify and improve City Hall services.

The advice is continually developing your social care app, created using Dynamics 365, while key software components of the application are being reused to speed up work in other services such as Psychopedagogy. Meanwhile, some staff are using Copilot for Microsoft 365 in an early adoption program that will likely expand. The Aberdeen developments exemplify how the public sector is harnessing new technologies to adapt and transform.

Tags: Azure, public sector