December 10, 2020 – In order to make communication between the city administration and the citizens as simple as possible, the City of Karlovac created a virtual assistant Korana in cooperation with the company bonsai.tech.
With the virtual assistant Korana, symbolically named after one of the four rivers flowing through the city, Karlovac is the first city in Croatia to use a chatbot to inform citizens about a city, county, or municipality.
As Lokalni.hr reports, instructed by positive experiences from the private sector and motivated by the risks of the pandemic and new business circumstances, the City of Karlovac very quickly decided to adopt artificial intelligence technology to use its potential.
Thus, in cooperation with the company bonsai.tech, which recognized the needs of local governments and new business challenges, Korana, a virtual assistant of the City of Karlovac and its residents, was created to make communication between the city administration and citizens easier, faster, and safer.
Offers an answer to the query
A smart city chatbot, i.e., a virtual assistant, is a tool that interactively informs the general public and thus greatly facilitates the work. The advantage of Korana is that at any time, without the need for support experts, it offers an answer to a query.
The City of Karlovac wants to make its services available to citizens at any time, informing them when they need it, without waiting for information by phone or e-mail. Users will thus be able to find out about the topic they are interested in through the Korana virtual assistant before contacting the city administration.
Photo: Screenshot Karlovac.hr
Korana will help the Karlovac citizens find the necessary information related to the city administration and current events, such as details of the winter service’s work, events in the city. At the same time, the city administration will facilitate contact and be a reliable support to its citizens by regularly updating the content and insight into the work of the chatbot.
Korana offers a menu with several groups of information; contacts, utilities, construction and housing, financial support, business and investment, tenders, and public calls and forms. Also, Korana has a database of questions and answers regularly updated following the analysis of questions asked by users.
Photo: Screenshot Karlovac.hr
It is currently available on Karlovac’s website, and it will soon be available to citizens within the Karlovac City Viber community and on the official Facebook pages of Karlovac.
Despite all the advantages of a virtual assistant, no matter how much one tries to assume what the citizens will be interested in and what their experience will be like, it is impossible to predict everything. Therefore, the City of Karlovac and the company bonsai.tech try to assume in advance a whole series of possible individual conversation series and dialogues to improve the citizens’ experience in using a virtual assistant.
An example to other Croatian cities
“Two years ago, we adopted the Smart City Strategy in the City of Karlovac, and the introduction of a virtual assistant is part of the idea of making the work of the city administration as accessible as possible to the citizens. With the virtual assistant Korana, accurate information can be obtained faster and from any digital platform, at any time of the day. The idea is to develop this principle of work overtime through the entire city system,” said Damir Mandić, Karlovac Mayor, at the presentation of the virtual assistant.
Virtual assistant Korana is a challenging pilot project and represents a new step forward that will indeed be followed by other cities in Croatia.
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