Experience from around the world shows that effective government electronic services can promote connections and business transactions between citizens and governments. It is a general trend for governments to use advanced technology to develop and improve service quality. In recent years, many international organizations have also continued to pay attention to the situation of local governments. .
A recent study by the Youth Entrepreneurship Database (referred to as the Innovation Institute) found that the new generation surveyed has a strong demand for e-government services, including more than 70% of the young people surveyed who have used government e-services, among which the most commonly used are inquiry and information search. . However, their evaluation of relevant aspects and the use experience are unsatisfactory. What they are most dissatisfied with is the lack of connections between online government departments, which affects efficiency and convenience.
In fact, the core target of e-government services is users, that is, the public; the essence lies in the service conception, design and delivery process, all focusing on user-centeredness, ensuring that services can provide users with a good experience, including appropriate online customer services , answer and handle public inquiries in real time.
Xinghan Chatbot provides round-the-clock service
In recent years, the latest relevant projects promoted by the governments of Hong Kong's neighboring regions, such as South Korea and Singapore, have focused on emerging technologies to promote users' happy public service journeys. Among them, the increasingly common chatbots (Chatbot) are used to The public provides round-the-clock inquiry service, which instantly analyzes the questions entered by the public and quickly provides practical information. The effect is quite good.
Young people are good at mastering technology, and they will be the main users of electronic services in the future. It is not difficult to imagine that they have certain expectations and demands for convenient, interactive and efficient services. In the new generation of public services, electronic services that are easy to use, fully self-service and hands-free are believed to be popular among the younger generation and will help further attract and encourage them to use government services.
At present, various policy bureaux and government departments of the Hong Kong SAR have established more than 500 government websites; in other words, the SAR government has hundreds of platforms to proactively disseminate information to the public. At the same time, the SAR government mainly uses the "1823" and "Hong Kong Government One Stop" (hereinafter referred to as "One Stop") websites to answer citizens' inquiries and help citizens obtain the public information they need. However, in recent years, the total number of citizens contacting "1823" through various channels has declined. Among them, the channels habitually used by the new generation, including inquiries from mobile applications and Facebook, only account for 3% of the total; and "One-Stop Contact" ” The number of pageviews also decreased in the most recent year.
In the above-mentioned research conducted by the Creative Research Institute, more than 40% of the young people surveyed said they would give priority to using other search engines to search for government information. Those who said they would contact "1823" or use "One Stop" only accounted for a few percentage points each.
"1823" query process is time-consuming
"1823" and "One-Stop" are not very attractive to the new generation. The reason is largely due to the failure of the e-government platform to achieve the expected one-stop service effect. Research by the Chuangyan Research Institute found that some young people who participated in focus group interviews believed that the "1823" telephone inquiry process was time-consuming and ended up hanging up, which was a disguised failure to use the service. In addition, citizens must follow the steps and press the instruction buttons to be connected to the attendant for enquiries. Some young people also mentioned that the search function of the "One-Stop" website is not accurate enough, and the search results often appear with more irrelevant content. As for searching for information on government department websites, they feel like "looking for a needle in a haystack". All these, All reflect that the authority’s online customer service lags behind the needs of the public and needs to be improved urgently.
We learned from the government that it is planning to implement an intelligent chatbot service to facilitate citizens to use the "1823" service. However, it must be noted that real-time dialogue is only part of the functions of the chatbot. Its core is to upgrade the inquiries from citizens from the original diversion function, break down the barriers between departments, and upgrade the system functions to connect the data of various departments. and electronic services, while making good use of online media.
The chatbot inquiry service launched by the Singaporean government in recent years is connected to more than 40 departmental websites and is used on social platforms such as Facebook and Skype. Considering that currently "1823" can only answer service inquiries about 22 participating departments, the government really needs to put more effort into linking various departments; otherwise, the chatbot will just become an online text version of telephone recording inquiries. , and the departments covered by service inquiries only maintain the status quo and have not been further expanded to dozens of other government departments.
Technological innovation can create opportunities to improve services. Today's life is fast-paced, and citizens expect technology to solve various problems in life faster and more efficiently. If the SAR government's plan to use chatbots in public services is successful, the government can further apply them on the "One Stop" website, various department websites and social media in the future to provide citizens with more in-depth and accurate electronic services.
Making good use of smart customer service to respond to citizens' inquiries can not only improve the quality of public services, but also increase the contact between citizens and the government, which is conducive to establishing and maintaining good governance of the SAR government. We hope to take this opportunity to bring about ideological and functional innovations in the SAR government’s electronic inquiry service.
Convener Pan Xuezhi, researcher Zhang Jingyun
Youth Association Youth Innovation Research Bank Governance and Political Group
