City of Kamloops testing AI tools that would scour documents, provide information

City hall testing out AI tools

Photo: City of Kamloops

A screenshot of an AI-powered chatbot being prototyped by the City of Kamloops.

The City of Kamloops is trialling AI chatbots intended to help staff and members of the public more easily source information from municipal documents.

It’s one of a few AI applications being prototyped by the City of Kamloops Information Technology department, according to IT manager Kuldeep Bath.

“These are not in production, you’re getting a bit of a preview of some of the things that are underway,” Bath told council’s committee of the whole on Tuesday.

City staff are exploring the use of AI to summarize council agendas and send alerts to staff about items of interest, to provide answers when people have questions about things like zoning, permitting or bylaws, and to assist residents with identifying and sorting items for waste or recycling.

Marco Lussetti, the city’s senior software developer, said a public-facing chatbot would help answer questions about city processes and bylaws — for example, which permits and fees might be needed to construct a swimming pool at a residence.

The external chatbot tool would interpret plain language questions and match them to the correct property or bylaw context and return guidance from municipal documents.

“The idea here would be to focus on getting these sort of tools to cite the bylaws, provide the specific section, so the user can refer to them and click on them and see the actual details, rather than just rely on what the bot is telling you,” Lussetti said.

An internal chatbot would similarly offer city employees with AI access to resources including policies, council procedures and privacy rules.

Bath said it’s being designed to allow a staff member to ask a plain language question and quickly receive answers pulled from official documentation.

“This is a very common tool in many organizations like ours. We have lots of documents and data, whether that's policies, procedures, forums, et cetera, that we all need to be aware of,” he said.

Bath said the IT team is also testing out a council agenda AI summary, which will help summarize the official agendas once they are posted. He noted this shouldn’t replace reading the actual reports in full.

“It's more of an indication to look into the more detailed report. But we think it would be useful for users to be able to get a more detailed summary than what’s in the agenda,” Bath said.

In addition, staff are also working on setting up council meeting alerts. Users would sign up to be notified about specific keywords and then would receive alerts when these words or similar topics appear on a council report or agenda.

Lussetti said another AI-based feature being prototyped includes a way to help people classify waste and recycling with their phone cameras. Photos taken by the user would be classified by AI.

"Then it's going to cross reference to all the various city facilities and third parties through Recycle BC, to find where can you take them,” he said.

Coun. Bill Sarai asked how confident staff are that the information provided by the chatbot will be accurate.

“Are we confident that the information they get from there, and they run with it, is going to be in line when they go to the desk at DES [Development Engineering Services] and say, ‘Hey, that's what AI told us to do,’” Sarai said.

Bath said a lot of work will be involved to train and test an AI chatbot, but there are also alternative methods where answers can be guided.

“We would likely take a very conservative approach, if it gets to a point and it's not certain, it would follow the existing process — which might be to contact us, fill out a form, read a bylaw, et cetera,” he said.