GovGPT pilot promises faster access to Government business support

Callaghan Innovation will pilot GovGPT, an AI conversational companion, to help businesses get the information they need from Government websites much faster.

The public-private sector initiative was announced today by Minister for Science Technology and Innovation, Judith Collins, at the 2024 Aotearoa AI Summit in Auckland.

An AI-based conversational companion, GovGPT will provide accurate and referenceable information on value-add Government support through natural language conversations.

“We know there’s a lot of Government support and information out there to help businesses thrive. But many are time poor, so they’re running the risk of not being able to access this support,” says Sarah Sun, Callaghan Innovation Digital and AI Whare Head.

“Ultimately, our vision is for a digital front-door where Kiwis can quickly and easily find answers to their questions about Government support and services. This is a first step.” A collaboration with Microsoft, and partner, Whāriki Māori Business Network, the GovGPT pilot was indexed on Government websites offering value-add information for businesses.

GovGPT features multilingual support, including English and text -based Te Reo Māori, offered using Microsoft’s Te Reo Māori language model. “It’s great to have Whāriki Māori Business Network on board to help us ensure the cultural relevance, and appropriateness of content so we can offer a comprehensive, valuable tool for all users,” says Sarah Sun.

The GovGPT pilot will seek to offer a seamless user experience, including customisation options for the appearance of the conversational companion, its voice, and talking speed.

“We are keen to ensure GovGPT meets the varying needs of the diverse businesses of Aotearoa so that finding this information is as easy as asking a question or two,” she says.

GovGPT uses ChatGPT's GPT-4o and Azure OpenAI as its underlying AI platform. It features multimodal input and output so it can support both text and speech chats. The pilot will use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques to enhance the accuracy and reliability of the generative AI model by fetching relevant facts from the indexed websites.

GovGPT will be demonstrated at the AI Summit on the Callaghan Innovation stand where the GovGPT project team will encourage feedback to support the development of the pilot.

The next step in the GovGPT pilot is for a proof-of-concept user interface to be developed for the AI Activator, a new Callaghan Innovation product also launched at the AI Summit.

The proof-of-concept will encourage feedback from businesses looking for support, who will be encouraged to ask GovGPT questions, and give feedback to aid its development.

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