Watson helps cities help citizens

The 411 on how artificial intelligence transforms 311 services

When citizens want to know when to put out recycling or alternate-side parking information, they often turn to their city’s 311 information systems for help, making a phone call or searching the web for answers. For more complicated questions, many cities unfortunately still rely on systems that are antiquated and pieced together. But recently, the city of Surrey, British Columbia, made their 311 services a whole lot easier when they turned to artificial intelligence solutions.

“Surrey is excited to be the first city in the world to deploy this transformational technology,” said City of Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner. “Innovation is key to ensuring our city remains prosperous and prepared to face the challenges of the future. A successful integration of IBM Watson into the city applications will maximize efficiencies and provide residents with a better customer service experience.”

Launched in 2015, the mobile app helps citizens access information that was traditionally dispensed by a call center or websites. With their My Surrey app (nicknamed “Siri for Cities”)– a mobile, cognitive computing application powered by IBM Watson — the city can quickly answer citizens’ frequently asked questions and reduce the cost of providing that service.

The My Surrey app addresses the 65 percent of 311 calls that have answers on the city websites, but are too difficult for residents to find. Depending on the size of the city, these calls coming into customer service centers can cost the government between four and five U.S. dollars each.

When Surrey began its digital initiative, Purple Forge, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of mobile community engagement solutions, was tasked to create the My Surrey app.

When a user asks My Surrey a question in natural language, the system will provide a response in text with links to suggested additional information. “The whole idea is to get as concise of an answer as possible to the user,” said Brian Hurley, CEO and co-founder of Purple Forge. “And if they want to follow the links, they can.”

Purple Forge wanted to use natural language questions to provide an enhanced customer experience, build an app that ensured multi-platform compatibility, and incorporate ways to receive continuous feedback on how to improve the program and reduce costs.

“We partnered specifically with IBM because we wanted the software to support their Watson solution, specifically their question and answer, and the natural language processing capabilities,” said Hurley

Hurley noted that initially, Purple Forge loaded more than 3,000 documents into Watson regarding 16 city service domains and taught it to respond to more than 10,000 questions a resident might ask. Because Watson continuously learns over time, the system’s knowledge base will only grow stronger and wider with increased interactions. The system is even adaptable by season, meaning Watson will change the types of answers given as seasonal interests and available resources change.

According to the City of Surrey, IBM Watson has been trained to understand questions for city services that include: Animal Control, Parking Enforcement, Waste Collection Pickup, Bylaws, Fire Police Emergency Services, Transportation, Utilities, Cemetery, Mobile Apps, Building and Construction, Engineering Customer Services, Engineering Infrastructure, Property Taxes, Culture, Recreation, and Volunteering.

Other cities are jumping on the AI bandwagon to make their 311 services easier to use. According to a story in Crain’s, New York City recently announced that by 2018 Watson will support a new customer-management system to be built from the ground up to support multiple communications channels, including social media and texts. Watson’s machine-learning capability is expected to speed up and refine the process of providing answers about city services and responding to complaints from across the five boroughs.

“Watson will know the whole city,” said Anne Roest, commissioner of the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which oversees 311’s technology. Watson will learn from the data already compiled by 311 and from the calls that continue to come in, the system will supply greater context and history. “That will be important for getting the whole answer,” the DoITT commissioner said.

Watson may not yet be a substitute for 311 in its current form, but it can be a useful guide to a city’s municipal services — and save you the trouble of Googling.