One conversation at a time Digital Services presents AI chatbot to public service professionals

Portland's Digital Services team introduced a generative AI chatbot to help residents schedule appropriate permit appointments during a recent presentation. The initiative aims to alleviate confusion that often leads to misrouted appointments and wasted staff time. Many customers struggle to navigate the complex permitting environment, sometimes booking multiple appointments out of uncertainty. To address this, the team conducted interviews with permitting technicians to identify pain points and structured the information for the chatbot. Using data from over 2,400 real interactions, they generated 200 synthetic examples to train the AI effectively.

The chatbot was developed with Google’s Dialogflow and is currently in internal testing. This project showcases the importance of human-centered design in making AI tools beneficial for civic services. Ultimately, it seeks to streamline the permitting process, enabling residents to complete their projects more efficiently.