undefined

points

[-]

Another way to do it is exemplified here: https://www.gov.uk

A well thumbed discussion on how to discover information though menus and otherwise is here: https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/WAISandGopher.html

You will notice that GOV.UK has effectively decided to use all three models - GOPHER/WAIS/W3. I find that it is surprisingly quick to find stuff on GOV.UK.

by dreadsword6 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

I've tried it - I've been playing around with a vibe coded application that crawls municipal websites, indexes and embeds, and then does rag retrieval. It came from the need to dig up specific information that's scattered across PDFs, multiple web pages, etc. - exactly as you described. AI does a decent job (w/ RAG) of synthesizing.

https://opencity.services/chat/winnipeg

how do i report a noise complaint?

It depends on the type of noise:

- Loud party or people-related noise: call the Winnipeg Police Service non-emergency line at 204-986-6222.

- Animals making unreasonably loud, unnecessary or excessive noises: report it through 3-1-1.

- Mechanical equipment noise like furnaces or air conditioners, or noise from construction tools used by a company or resident: contact Community By-law Enforcement Services at 3-1-1.

- Planned event noise: you may need a Noise Permit at no cost, but it is not for construction work and should be submitted at least four weeks before the event.

The City also says noise-generating activities within 150 metres of a residential property are generally prohibited before 7 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on weekdays, and before 9 a.m. and after 9 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays.

------

YMMV. A big part of the backend is categorizing hits and misses, with an eye to helping municipalities clean up conflicting information, fill obvious gaps, etc.

by saghm20 minutes ago|

parent|

[-]

Honestly if your city has a 311 style thing, I'm not sure there's a ton of need for an LLM. Eight or nine years ago my grandmother visited me in New York and accidentally left her pocket book in the cab. Since I had paid for it with my credit card, I was able to see the medallion number in the transaction, so I called 311 and said that I wanted to get in touch with a specific taxi. It prompted me for the medallion number, which I told it, and then it transferred me to a call with the dispatch service, who then transferred me to the specific garage, and they called the driver and told him to call me, so we were able to meet up again and get the pocketbook back (turned out he returned to where he had dropped us off to try to find us, but since we only had a short stop there, we took another cab back to her hotel after, so we were gone).

by cucumber37328426 hours ago|

parent|

prev|

[-]

This works fine when you're sicking enforcement on someone and don't really care, the bigger the blast radius the better, you just want to know who to call.

Where it falls apart is "how do I" type questions because usually the legally factual answer is some huge complex state diagram where three local and four state agencies theoretically have discretionary jurisdiction over a your petty af project or business but the in practice answer is that some agency rubber stamps them all with minimal fuss. You can't make the legally factual answer clear because the degree to which people support the status quo is largely predicated on ignorance, but you also can't come out and say in writing that you have a policy of rubber stamping boring stuff.

Basically the same reasons that all but the most minor and narrowly targeted attempts at permitting reform fail.

The thought is nice but in reality you're basically asking the government to give up power and it takes obscene amounts of political capital to force that to happen in most cases.

by Xirdus6 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

Having used various "ask AI" features in various work tools over the last half a year for looking up project designs, documentation, chat logs, meeting notes etc., I can tell you even a half assed AI chatbot is a huge improvement over the pre-AI state of things for this use case.

by scun6 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

or a well-crafted static website

by nfw26 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

no, static documents are not an ideal way to find a needle in a haystack

by graemep6 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

They can be with decent search and if well organised. gov.uk works pretty well as it is and I suspect adding a chatbot would make it worse.

by nfw21 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

1. decent search, if you mean something other than what the browser provides, isn't part of a static document

2. the nature of the problem statement "needle in a haystack" suggests obstacles to traditional text search, eg. too many false positives to be helpful for natural searches and challenges to constructing more specific ones.

language models introduce new possible solutions to this ie semantic search. poorly-designed chatbots could be worse than a basic search, sure

by graemep30 minutes ago|

parent|

[-]

1. I mean static documents plus decent search you can find the right documents.

2. Yes, but its difficult to get a chat bot to function well over the wide range of services a government offers and the wide range of users who need government services.

One of the most annoying chatbots I have ever come across was on a UK government site. The DVLA. "lets tell you what you already know and not answer the question".

Possibly something well designed might make it easier, but I have found most of gov.uk to be very usable and helpful.

by nfw224 minutes ago|

parent|

[-]

How does the form factor of a chat bot affect the quality of a search running on a backend? It has the benefit of obviously having a semantic search affordance which a standard search field doesn't.