PassBot: A chatbot for providing information on Getting a Greek Passport

What is it about?

The aim of this paper is to develop and evaluate a chatbot (namely PassBot) for providing personalized information on the Public Service “Get a Greek Passport”. The chatbot itself is developed using Rasa open-source platform, communicates with a relational CPSV-based database and is integrated in a website for testing purposes.

Featured Image

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Why is it important?

First, eGovernment portals and PS e-catalogues do not provide personalized information. It is often the case that these portals only contain descriptions of the most usual case. For example, in the case of Get a Passport, information on obtaining a passport is usually provided for the most usual case. In reality however PS have different versions based on citizens’ profile and circumstances, Second, eGovernment portals and PS e-catalogues are not using standard PS models, i.e. data models proposed for describing and/or developing PS. Instead, they are using national standards or ad hoc templates. The European Union (EU) has created the Core Public Service Vocabulary (CPSV). Although CPSV is a promising model, it cannot be used for describing complex PS. Third, eGovernment portals and PS e-catalogues rarely use emerging technologies for providing personalized PS descriptions. At the same time, chatbots can facilitate human-machine communication and are currently used on all types of web applications including social media platforms (ex. Facebook, Twitter etc.). Combining all the above, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of chatbots in providing personalized information. For this purpose, PassBot was developed to provide personalized information on PS “Get a Greek Passport”. The PS is described using the CPSV model in a modified and extended version that allows the presentation and storage of the PS in a relational database.

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