37 municipalities to be digitalized by IBM chatbot

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It is with great pleasure,  I can announce that IBM has been awarded the opportunity to digitalize the Danish municipalities’ communication platform, Den Digitale Hotline (DDH), with a new chatbot as a self-service solution.

IBM has initiated a collaboration with Aarhus Municipality, leading Den Digitale Hotline (DDH), which for now represents 37 municipalities and more than 2.5 million citizens, in offering a new chatbot – available day and night. The remaining 41 municipalities, undecided add up to 78 municipalities, can participate in the project, which equals to 80% of Danish municipalities.

Thus, IBM Services will during 2020 contribute to assuring a digital municipal platform based on IBM Public Cloud with unique key technology from Watson Discovery and Watson Assistant.

For numerous people, the new chatbot solution will be a significant supplement to the 60 weekly telephone hours offered by the municipalities. Chairman of DDH’s steering committee, Lene Hartig Danielsen, is ”(…) not in any doubt that IBM’s chatbot solution is the right one for this purpose.” Hartig emphasizes the importance of an easy and constant digital access to the public sector. Rightly so, the greatest advantage of IBM’s chatbot implementation will be the citizens’ opportunity to access it anytime anywhere.

IBM’s solution was chosen in a field of 12 local and global candidates – down selected to 5 finalists. Head of DDH’s chatbot project, Torben Glock, explains the reasons for choosing IBM: “The company had the best price and scored the highest in the parameters of quality.”  The deliverable will be a standard solution with the option for every municipality to adjust as needed.

Great potential for chatbot to augment UX in the public sector

This innovative and technological mindset can benefit our municipalities in many ways. Given the fact that the 350,000 annual inquires do not differ substantially from each other no matter which municipality they originate from, a common chatbot will be able to streamline the services in a cost-effective, relevant manner. Likewise, the synergy of which will accumulate across the various municipalities can be used to further optimize the solution.

IBM is excited to get started with this project, as it presents tremendous upside in considerably changing and enhancing the user experience of the average citizen. Furthermore, it is expected that DDH’s new chatbot channel will be available on several platforms simultaneously. Therefore, we are very keen on the opportunity to positively impact the digitalization of Denmark’s public sector.

If interested in becoming familiar with the technology behind our chatbot, please visit the IBM Public Cloud and IBM chatbot webpages, where you can try out IBM Public Cloud and learn how to build your own chatbot.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at petermj@dk.ibm.com (telephone: +45  2880 3272)