Articles

Look out for the launch in October this year of GovGPT – a conversational tool designed to help businesses obtain information they need from several Government websites, from the one place and much faster.

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Currently, the tool is in a closed pilot stage, run by Callaghan Innovation, in partnership with Whāriki Māori Business Network and a technology provider. The two-months of proof-of-concepting is said to be a multi-lingual chatbot that saves you the effort of Google searches and visits to multiple Government agency websites. These websites are likely to have been trawled for information by existing chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, to offer similar results.

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So, while the application is currently a search chatbot that isn’t providing anything new, it is a one-stop access point for the government – with a lot of potential to demonstrate efficiencies in dealing with agencies digitally, which could lead to increased trust.

Having the Whāriki Māori Business Network involved will also enhance the te reo facility of the tool and help to build that trust across the Māori business community.

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Strong trust will be needed though, if GovGPT is developed further to become an agent for citizens to not just ask questions, but to apply to Government agencies on your behalf and provide any required information. Why? Because you will need to entrust your private details to the chatbot - so that it can analyse the application forms and sift through your data to fill them in correctly and send them digitally to the right Government department.

There will need to be considerable guardrails in place to safeguard users’ information and inspire this trust, which may take some time to establish.

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So, the soon-to-be-launched version of GovGPT is not yet a big step forward – but it is setting the stage for some potentially useful, and hopefully well safeguarded, tools.

While the AI tools for thematic analysis we have previously discussed are relevant to our clients and respondents (link), the ramifications of GovGPT will apply to all New Zealanders who need to access Government services.

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Potentially, this tool could could assist with information sharing and streamline dealing with Government agencies. It might be something to keep an eye on...

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