Figure(left): Interface of AI Tax Robot | Figure(right): Interact with an AI robot with Conversational AI function.
Facing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan has relied on its advantages in information technology to bring major changes to government governance as well as industries. Meanwhile, Taiwan also worked hard to share its transformation with the world. With the goal of leading the industrial upgrading/transformation and the development of digital technology, the Taiwan Government has led the “Smart City Taiwan” project and developed innovative applications covering six major fields, such as “Healthcare “, “Governance/Safety”, “Transportation”, “Agriculture”, “Education”, “Tourism/Retail” in 22 counties and cities across Taiwan. The promotion of the plan has achieved fruitful results so far. About 300 companies have participated in and developed 223 smart services, benefiting 8.54 million people.
The pandemic has seriously impacted and changed people’s lives, socialization, work, economy and governance models. Public sectors of various countries are facing unprecedented uncertainty. Face-to-face serves and personnel movement have been minimized because of the Covid-19 prevention, which has affected citizens’ communication and interaction with their municipality. However, during the critical moment of the pandemic, requirements for efficiency and communication of governance are higher, and the system of governance needs to be significantly changed. The biggest challenge governments facing is how to respond to the normalization of the pandemic, accelerate the promotion of digital transformation, so that municipal operations do not stop, and can quickly provide smart governance and services.
Taking Taiwan’s tax authorities as an example, in order to make it easier and faster for the public to apply for tax, The Smart City Taiwan project and Intumit Innovation Inc. collaborated and presented “A Smart City” to assist Taoyuan City, Hsinchu City, Hsinchu County and Miaoli County governments in planning AI tax robots. As long as the robot performs video authentication, it can handle tax business online in real time, allowing people to consult without time and place restrictions, and also reducing the burden on grassroots tax personnel to achieve the vision of zero-contact for pandemic prevention, remote service and smart government governance.
Intumit Innovation Inc.’s AI tax robot consists of services such as video bidding, 24-hour intelligent customer service, foreign tax interpretation, video counter bidding, etc. Not only conduct online interactive questions-and-answers with the public based on the eligibility logic of various tax fields, give personalized tax consultation, but also conduct tax trial calculations through situational dialogues. AI tax robots promote the interaction of various tax information with the public and improve the value of information.In addition to being used in the field of tax business, Intumit Innovation Inc. also exported its conversational AI platform services to Japan under the promotion of the Smart City Taiwan Project. It cooperates with Japanese prefectural and municipal government units to provide pandemic prevention policy updates, warnings and information announcements, and provide citizens with many functions such as vaccine registration, question-and-answer, tracking and reporting. In addition, it has also been extended to the Japanese tourism industry and the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido, providing travel services such as consultation, itinerary booking, information correction, plan selection or suggested scheduling. Conversational AI strengthens communication and interaction between citizens and the government, improves service speed, efficiency and flexibility, and makes services more user-friendly. Coupled with the increase in demand for remote communication and non-contact interaction driven by the pandemic. Conversational AI will become an important technology application to strengthen customer experience and digital transformation.
Author:
Yun-Chung Wang from ISTI
Taiwan Smart City Development Project Office of Industrial Development Bureau, M.O.E.A.
