Estonians will soon chat with only one bot to access all public services and more

The responsible organisation

The Information System Authority (RIA) is an administrative agency of the Republic of Estonia within the administrative area of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication. Among its main tasks, it (i) coordinates the development and administration of information systems ensuring the interoperability of the state’s information system, (ii) organizes activities related to information security, and (iii) handles security incidents in Estonian computer networks. RIA is also in charge of developing cyber security strategies and policies and of coordinating the safe implementation of IT infrastructures.

The problem

In Estonia, different chatbots have been developed for various government agencies. This creates a potential challenge for end-users (citizens and businesses) in effectively navigating through the extensive range of e-government services. A unique interoperable chatbot will play a relevant role in providing faster and more efficient assistance to citizens, helping them in solving everyday issues.

The solution and its implementation

The idea of Bürokratt is to allow citizens to have access to any public service needed (and potentially to relevant private services of interest) through one single communication channel and from any device thanks to one virtual assistant. Bürokratt is meant to be an interoperable network of public sector agencies attached to national information communication systems, as well as those provided by the private sector, that will be made accessible via one single chatbot. This chatbot will use voice-based communication and other channels, such as instant messages, and will provide a seamless access point. The solution will be mainly based on Natural Language Processing adding “Machine Learning processing chains” with different algorithms and it is being trained using two third-party solutions - the RASA NLP/Chatbot framework3 and the BookStack platform4. It will be built inside the national cloud, using the state authentication service. This will ensure user data protection when processing data through all Estonian public administrations.

Expected results and current challenges

The chatbot is currently in training phase. The RIA aims to first connect the chatbot – equipped with video and audio support - to two different agencies by the end of 2023. When fully developed, the solution is expected to bring positive effects for digital services in Estonia, in terms of:

Increased efficiency. Workers employed in customer support in all engaged organisations are expected to benefit from lower loads of queries, devoting saved effort to other duties;
Increased effectiveness. Citizens will be able to access services and information more quickly, in a more interoperable framework.

Current challenges

The administration is however currently facing some difficulties in establishing a collaboration with (public or private) organisations to be engaged in the network. This is related to the fact that the expertise needed to jointly develop this kind of AI solution is very high and some organisations may not be ready to take part in this project.