ESTONIA
A project that will ultimately allow Estonian citizens to ask Siri, Alexa or almost any other virtual digital assistant to interact with Government Departments on their behalf is under consideration.
Chief Government Information Officer, Siim Sikkut (pictured) said its digital services strategy was being taken to the next level with the creation of a network of Public Sector software robots.
“Through a virtual assistant of a citizen’s choice, these robots can be accessed to complete Government service application processes,” Mr Sikkut said.
“Because the Estonian Government makes all its services available online, the system will be able to access all the information it needs about a citizen to process things such as applications for a new passport.”
He said after a citizen made a voice request, the virtual assistant might ask for a fingerprint to verify their identity or a selfie to be used on a document but, beyond that, applications for services such as renewing passports and registering births would be automated.
Mr Sikkut said that in the future citizens might be able to ask Siri to do their taxes, for example, which would trigger an automated process where artificial intelligence (AI) applications in different Departments interacted to complete the request.
He admitted the project, known as is #KrattAI, was still in the conceptual stage.
“It will enable citizens, if they wish, to interact with the Government in a similar way to how they use Alexa to play certain music or order food,” Mr Sikkut said.
“Fundamentally, we don’t offer an interface,” he said.
“People will use the interfaces that are with them anyway, whether it is Echo in the home or a mobile phone.”
He said the hard job for him was to attract people to the Government’s channels “but we want to turn it around and say, ‘Hey, the channel is with you already’.”
Tallinn, 27 February 2020
