[Seoul, Now] AI Public Officials

Pilot Project for Initial Welfare Counseling Using AI
Seoul's Autonomous Districts Uncover Welfare Blind Spots
Expanding Support to Youth Employment and Interview Assistance

Recent cases of applying artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the field of public welfare are increasing. The main purpose is to improve public services and enhance work efficiency, and it is believed that it will also greatly help solve the emotional labor issues of public officials.

As the number of single-person households increases and aging accelerates, the demand for welfare services is rapidly expanding. The number of public officials is limited, and as the workload increases, there can be leakage in other important tasks. The "Pilot Project for Initial Welfare Counseling Using AI" is a representative AI application project implemented this year in several autonomous districts of Seoul.

Previously, to identify households in crisis needing help, the responsible public officials visited each household or made phone calls to conduct initial counseling. This method requires a lot of time and manpower from the initial counseling stage. There was a limitation in that sufficient counseling could not be provided to households in welfare blind spots. It was difficult to discover new crisis households, and the workload and stress of welfare officials were considerable.

Local governments conduct regular surveys to identify welfare blind spots six times a year, every two months. In Gangbuk-gu, where the elderly population ratio is high, about 2,000 people are surveyed at a time, totaling around 12,000 people annually, with an average of about 10 public officials per neighborhood involved in this work.

The initial counseling starts with three common questions related to health, economy, and employment, such as "Do you or your family need help due to physical, psychological, or mental health problems?" "Do you need help due to lack of living expenses, arrears, or debt?" and "Do you need help due to job-related issues?" Then, additional questions related to the previously identified crisis information of the subject, such as family care, daily life maintenance, social relationships, housing, legal and rights protection, safety, childcare and education, conflicts, and isolation, are asked to proceed with the initial counseling. If the call is not answered or communication is not possible, the responsible public official contacts the person and conducts direct counseling as before.

Gangbuk-gu, which participated in the AI-based initial welfare counseling pilot project, said, "Based on the automatically aggregated content, the responsible public officials can focus on in-depth counseling and welfare support, enabling much more efficient service." Gangnam-gu reported that this year, through the AI system, initial counseling was conducted for 60% of the subjects from whom crisis information was obtained, significantly reducing the time and manpower required for initial counseling.

As AI utilization in public administration increases, it will further help improve work efficiency in autonomous districts where the number of subjects is large compared to the number of public officials or population. Gangbuk-gu has a population of 284,500, about half of Gangnam-gu’s population (557,200), but the annual number of initial welfare counseling subjects is about 12,000, a similar scale.

In addition, AI technology is actively used in welfare check services to prevent solitary deaths. Unlike the existing welfare check service that asks short-answer questions, Gangnam-gu has been operating an AI welfare check service capable of natural conversation like a human by remembering the context of the conversation in cooperation with Naver since the end of last year.

Targeting about 850 households at risk of solitary death, the service analyzes users’ conversation content about health, meals, sleep, exercise, outings, etc., to monitor daily life and respond to emergency and crisis situations. Gangbuk-gu operates an AI interview diagnosis service using AI technology like ChatGPT to support youth employment. The era of AI public officials is rapidly approaching.