The majority of large and medium-sized cities in Finland use the asiointi.fi - Feedback system. Through the feedback system, municipal residents and stakeholders can give electronic feedback easily and quickly.
The new artificial intelligence extension to be released in the summer of 2021 will facilitate both giving feedback and processing it. The extension has been developed in cooperation with Trimble, Top Data Science, the city of Jyväskylä and the city of Lahti.
"We had two big goals. We bring additional information to the feedback giver almost without noticing. Secondly, we enhance the work of feedback handlers with automatic interpretation and analysis," says Chief Operating Officer Kai Lehtinen from Top Data Science.
asiointi.fi - The feedback uses location information, and with the help of the map, the feedback is aimed precisely at a specific location. In the past, feedback has been routed directly to the right person in charge, but in the future the system will also interpret the content automatically.
"Artificial intelligence highlights the desired themes and analyzes the text so that the handler can see at a glance what it's about, which area the feedback applies to, and whether it's about the past or the future in terms of time," says Jukka Vänttinen, Trimble's product development director.
The goal is to give an answer even before sending the feedback
The city of Jyväskylä has had asiointi.fi - Feedback in use since 2010, and in 2012 it was expanded into a feedback system covering the entire city. About 13,000 pieces of feedback are received each year. The most messages are related to streets, forests, parks, public transport and outdoor lighting.
"Of course, we do not aim for the amount of feedback to increase enormously. The main purpose is for people to find information without sending feedback," says Jyväskylä city's spatial information manager Janne Hartman.
With artificial intelligence-based automation, the municipality can create themes from recurring topics, to which pages offering additional information can be linked. When the user writes feedback, the artificial intelligence recognizes the topic and suggests going directly to the additional information page. In addition, the system displays similar feedback already given, which the user can like instead of sending new feedback.
"Functionality makes it easier for the municipal residents and therefore for us too, when we don't have to answer the same things. We are also developing our own websites so that we can direct the citizens to the right kind of page even better. Everyone benefits from that," says Janne Hartman.
In the city of Lahti, asiointi.fi - Feedback has been in use for twenty years, and it is the city's main feedback system. There are about 9,000 feedbacks per year, the most for traffic and street maintenance in the Lahti region.
"On the other hand, it is important that customers give feedback, and we want to promote that. On the other hand, we have limited resources to respond. The challenge is to combine these two conflicting goals," says Aija Holopainen, spatial information manager of the city of Lahti.
The extension of the feedback service was the first urban environment service area project in Lahti that utilized artificial intelligence. Holopainen also sees the most important benefit as the fact that the citizen receives additional information immediately when giving feedback and sees other people's feedback and the answers given to them.
"The goal is that the customer's path in giving feedback and asking questions should be as smooth as possible."
Functionality makes it easier for the municipal residents, and thus for us too, when we don't have to answer the same questions. We are also developing our own websites so that we can direct the citizens to the right kind of page even better. Everyone benefits from that.
— Janne Hartman, spatial information manager
City of Jyväskylä
Artificial intelligence automatically identifies sensitive information
Municipalities can decide for themselves whether the given feedback will be published directly for everyone to see. asiointi.fi - Feedback will identify sensitive information in the future and prevent feedback containing it from being published as such.
"The extension is based on the ability of modern artificial intelligence technology to interpret natural language. It manages well even casually written text and rambling word choices. The combination of an advanced feedback system and advanced artificial intelligence automation is the first of its kind in the market," says Kai Lehtinen.
In Jyväskylä, all feedback related to technical work is published automatically. In the past, offensive feedback or feedback containing personal information could remain visible for, say, a weekend.
"When a citizen sends feedback and wants it to be made public, it is also immediately visible. As a rule, this works without problems, but sometimes there are slanderous feedbacks. With the extension, we can continue the previous practice and even more safely," says Janne Hartman.
The policy of the city of Lahti is to publish feedback only after processing.
"Both solutions have their merits, but at least for the time being, we still have the defendant's control in between. Of course, the line can be changed if it would be safer thanks to the advance check of artificial intelligence," says Aija Holopainen.
The goal is to make the customer's path in giving feedback and asking questions as smooth as possible.
— Aija Holopainen, spatial information manager
the city of Lahti
The development work was started from the needs of the cities
The joint development project of Trimble, Top Data Science, Lahti and Jyväskylä started in March 2021 and was completed at the end of May. All parties praise the excellent cooperation.
"This was a very interesting project, and we had a positive spirit for development. Of course, when a new thing is being developed, everyone was enthusiastic and it was exciting to create new functionality," says Janne Hartman.
The artificial intelligence extension is not city-bound, but the team worked together on a solution suitable for everyone. Kai Lehtinen emphasizes the importance of involving customers.
"Jyväskylä and Lahti brought out the needs of cities through concrete examples, Trimble has a feedback system and top-class know-how, and we at Top Data Science have the ability to apply the best artificial intelligence technologies," he sums up.
The project was worked on during the spring with several remote meetings and workshops. The cooperation of the four operators was agile and the amount of administrative work remained reasonable.
"The project progressed on a brisk schedule through the workshops. The workshop is not blissful, so that you go to the workshop and come out with clever results, but in this case it went really well. I thought it was really important that we create something that will be used and that will be genuinely useful", says Aija Holopainen.
Holopainen also praises the fact that Trimble acts as the only contact person for the customer and handles communication in the direction of Top Data Science.
"I also have a lot of experience with joint solutions from several suppliers, and it's not always so easy to find who to ask if there are problems. I would think that this will go much more clearly when we can do business only in Trimble's direction," says Holopainen.
The AI plugin is easy to deploy
It is possible to purchase the extension as an additional feature to the asiointi.fi - Feedback application. It will also be introduced in Lahti and Jyväskylä as soon as possible.
"Without a doubt, we will implement this very quickly when the final version comes out. There is no big need for training or implementation work here," says Janne Hartman.
During the project, Trimble's systems also identified other potential areas where the work of users and the transactions of municipal residents could be facilitated with artificial intelligence.
"I especially hope that we will find applications and ideas that can be used elsewhere in different parts of the geographic information system. As it is, this is still small, but I see this as the beginning of something much bigger", says Aija Holopainen.