The government has reaffirmed that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will be adopted with the aim of helping public servants more effectively tackle enquiries, opinions and complaints raised by residents.
The Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (SAFP) made the remarks in a reply to a written interpellation by lawmaker Sharon Loi I Weng.
Loi, a teacher by profession, is the vice-principal of the school run by the influential Macau Women’s General Association (commonly known as Fu Luen in Cantonese).
After Loi made the written interpellation in late November, the bureau replied last month, which has now been uploaded onto the legislature’s website.
Loi’s interpellation came after Secretary for Administration and Justice Wong Sio Chak told lawmakers in November that the government had completed establishing the basic framework for a single and simple platform for residents to raise opinions and complaints related to all government entities, with this new public feedback gathering platform to be operated through the applications of big data models as well as artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
The SAFP reply said that with the aim of enhancing the government’s effectiveness in handling public opinion, it is reforming its public feedback gathering and processing mechanism in three aspects, namely the legal system, technologies used for feedback platforms, and public entities performance evaluation management.
3 aspects
In terms of the first aspect, the reply said, the government will establish unified standards for all public entities to tackle opinions and complaints raised by residents, while also “improving” the deadline for the public entities to make their reply and more clearly defining their responsibility on the matter.
In terms of the second aspect, the government will establish a standardised management mechanism, where it will establish a single platform to handle residents’ opinions and complaints with the use and applications of AI technologies, with the aim of assisting public servants to receive and handle the opinions and complaints.
The reply said that this will also enables the seamless transfer and tracking of residents’ opinions across different public entities, facilitating interdepartmental coordination in processing their opinions and ensures that the opinions will receive timely responses.
In terms of the third aspect, the reply said, certain factors such as the length of time used by the respective public entities to handle opinions as well as the residents’ satisfaction level about the public entities’ reply will be included in the government’s evaluation of their respective performances, with the aim of encouraging public entities to pay close attention to public opinions, adopt a people-orientated approach, and improve their service quality, in compliance with the local government’s ultimate objective of building a more efficient service-orientated government.
This undated file photo provided by Fu Luen to the media shows lawmaker Sharon Loi I Weng addressing a plenary session of the legislature.
