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International Conference on Electronic Participation

ePart 2020: Electronic Participation pp 133–146Cite as

“I’m Disabled and Married to a Foreign Single Mother”. Public Service Chatbot’s Advice on Citizens’ Complex Lives

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 12220)

Abstract

This paper describes a study of citizens’ chats with a chatbot of a public agency. We have analyzed chat logs and identified citizens’ lack of domain knowledge as a source of inadequate or failed chatbot responses. We identify three types of lack of domain knowledge: lack of the right vocabulary, uncertainty if a regulation fits the citizen’s situation or the “shape sorting box” problem, or citizen’s misunderstanding the regulations. The most serious failure is when a misunderstanding is not detected and corrected during the chat. The chatbot we studied is not able to make sense of badly formed questions from citizens. As implications for design we suggest making the chatbot limitations visible by not presenting it as a human-like avatar with a name. We also suggest to enable domain knowledge learning through its conversations.

Keywords

  • Chatbot
  • Domain knowledge
  • Digitalization

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58141-1_11
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Acknowledgements

We thank LWA Contact Center and its leader for giving us access to the chat logs and for allowing us to interview the advisors and chatbot trainers.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oslo, Gaustadalléen 23B, 0373, Oslo, Norway

    Linett Simonsen, Tina Steinstø, Guri Verne & Tone Bratteteig

Authors
  1. Linett Simonsen
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  2. Tina Steinstø
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  3. Guri Verne
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  4. Tone Bratteteig
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guri Verne .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway

    Sara Hofmann

  2. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Csaba Csáki

  3. Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria

    Noella Edelmann

  4. Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria

    Thomas Lampoltshammer

  5. Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Ulf Melin

  6. Danube University Krems, Krems, Austria

    Peter Parycek

  7. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schwabe

  8. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Efthimios Tambouris

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Simonsen, L., Steinstø, T., Verne, G., Bratteteig, T. (2020). “I’m Disabled and Married to a Foreign Single Mother”. Public Service Chatbot’s Advice on Citizens’ Complex Lives. In: , et al. Electronic Participation. ePart 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12220. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58141-1_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58141-1_11

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