Hong Kong to spend HK$4.6 million on improving public inquiry hotline, including AI
- Government bureau says new feature will allow the 1823 public inquiry service chatbot to answer questions across all service areas by third quarter of year
- Officials say ‘instant and convenient’ self-service will allow staff to focus on more complex cases
The Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau said in a written reply to lawmakers that the chatbot would offer “instant and convenient” self-service to the public so staff could focus on more complicated cases.
The bureau said: “1823 is fully expanding the AI chatbot to answer frequently asked questions under all of its scope of service, such as applications for public rented housing and driving licences.
“We will collect user feedback on such aspects as the adequacy and clarity of the information provided, as well as the user interface design, in order to enhance the case handling capability and user experience of the AI chatbot.”
The 1823 service is an inquiries and complaints hotline for 23 government departments and agencies. It dealt with an average of 1.9 million inquiries and logged 550,000 complaints every year between 2018 and 2023.
Its AI chatbot, dubbed Tammy, can be accessed through its website and mobile app and handles an average of more than 20,000 inquiries a year.
The bureau said a pilot project would also be launched in the 2024-25 financial year to test generative AI technology to help staff draft replies to written inquiries from members of the public.
“The technology will save staff effort to search for relevant information in the knowledge base, thereby enhancing 1823’s case handling capability and efficiency,” the bureau explained.
Performance of Hong Kong’s 1823 hotline not so hot
It would also adopt AI speech-to-text technology to transcribe voicemail messages into text, cutting the time needed for information inputting and boost handling efficiency.
Speech recognition technology would also be introduced to identify problems raised by callers and send them text messages with the requested information so that callers did not need to answer calls in person.
The speech technology improvements are expected to be completed this year.
The bureau said the phone system for the 1823 service was upgraded in 2023, including the adoption of AI speech recognition technology, which allowed people to use their voice to input their options without the need to press buttons.
It can also recognise callers’ inquiries and select the information they need.
The estimated total expenditure for all projects between 2023 and 2025 is HK$4.6 million.
The bureau said it started to use chatbot technology for the 1823 service in 2019, at an initial development cost of HK$3 million. It is operated by two staff members and maintenance is done by a contractor. It has cost an average of HK$420,000 to run each year over the last five years.
The bureau said about HK$175 million was spent on 1823 in the 2023-24 financial year, including salary expenditure, support or maintenance costs and other operating expenses, up by about 6.7 per cent on the actual expenditure in 2022-23.
Hong Kong’s 1823 hotline failed to resolve public complaints properly: ombudsman
It added it expected the 1823 service’s target percentage for “calls that can be answered within 12 seconds” to reach 80 per cent this year.
The ombudsman earlier found that the 1823 service had failed to resolve cases involving multiple government departments, leading to months-long delays in dealing with complaints.
The investigation also revealed that the hotline’s 500 employees could only handle 42 per cent of calls each year, which meant an annual total of about 2.5 million went unanswered.
About 1.4 per cent of complaints a year needed to be handled by an “escalation mechanism”, triggered after a complaint was rejected by two departments.
Complaints in the category are transferred to higher-ranked officials for consideration.
But 60 per cent of the escalated complaints took more than 30 days to process and about 7.5 per cent were unresolved for more than six months.
