In addition to CDC-informed topics, the Austin IBM watsonx Assistant for Citizens chatbot is also conversant in many additional topics related to staying at home, social distancing, people at high risk, local screening resources, local news updates, business and school closures, and job loss and unemployment services.ĭuring the initial rollout, the chatbot was set up to interact with citizens over a text-based chat. The chatbot is updated with the latest information from local and state government agencies, so citizens can be confident in the answers they receive. Now, in addition to calling the City’s 3-1-1 information line, Austin residents can connect with the “City of Austin Bot” at any time of the day or night.

“It was a ‘just add water’ solution for the City of Austin.” “We were able to stand up the IBM watsonx Assistant for Citizens chatbot platform very quickly,” says Dean. By the beginning of April 2020, visitors to the City of Austin’s home page were pressing a button labelled “Coronavirus Questions? Chat with our Virtual Assistant” and getting the timely information they needed. Through close collaboration across all city departments and IBM, the chatbot was installed, tested and deployed within one week. To make deployment as fast and efficient as possible, IBM offered the IBM watsonx Assistant for Citizens chatbot to the City of Austin free of charge for the first 90 days and provided technical assistance with initial setup on the city’s website. In late 2019, when reports began coming from China about a novel coronavirus outbreak, IBM engineers proactively built the IBM watsonx Assistant for Citizens chatbot platform.ĭesigned specifically for use by governments to communicate with constituents on pandemic-related topics, the chatbot is pre-loaded to understand and respond to common questions about COVID-19, based on the latest information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Austin officials learned that they did not have to go far for a pandemic response chatbot because IBM® had already tested and developed a solution, based on Watson AI technology. The callers were from an information technology company that has been a part of the Austin community since 1937-IBM. But this time, the callers didn’t have questions about the pandemic. Shortly thereafter, the City of Austin received yet another citizen inquiry. Meanwhile, public demand for information kept growing as thousands of Austin residents became infected with the virus. “We needed to provide residents with a faster way to get answers for specific questions.”Īnother option soon emerged: could the city’s website host a chat room with an automated agent that could immediately answer the most pressing questions about the pandemic? This proposal sounded plausible, but it would take Austin’s IT staff months to develop, test and deploy a usable pandemic response chatbot from scratch. “However, it became clear to us that, when it came to getting specific COVID-19 information, the public did not want to wait for a phone operator or wade through many web pages to find what they were looking for, says Alicia Dean, Communications and Marketing Consultant for the City of Austin. The City of Austin already managed a range of public information platforms including a well-used 3-1-1 phone service, a comprehensive website and various social media channels. In response to these events, public demand for pandemic-related information reached high levels of intensity. And on March 28th, Austin registered its first COVID-19 related fatality. On March 24th, Austin officials issued a stay-at-home order and a bustling city began to shut down. A week later, the first COVID-19 case in Austin’s Travis County was diagnosed. On March 6th, Austin’s mayor cancelled the iconic South by Southwest festival out of concerns that large crowds could spread infection. When would the virus come to Central Texas and how it would impact their lives?Īnswers to these questions came in rapid-fire succession.

At the beginning of 2020, while following news reports about the COVID-19 virus landing on American shores, the people of Austin waited and wondered.

Chatbot companies austin