Draft:GovGPT

GovGPT is a digital chat companion developed as a public pilot by the New Zealand Government. Designed as a "digital front door" for government services, GovGPT assists small businesses by providing user-friendly access to information grounded in publicly available government websites. It represents a novel approach to using artificial intelligence (AI) in public service delivery, focusing on accessibility, efficiency, and supporting economic growth.

GovGPT was announced as part of Callaghan Innovation's AI Activator, an initiative to raise awareness, interest, engagement, and investment in artificial intelligence across New Zealand.

Background

GovGPT was introduced as part of New Zealand's broader initiative to digitise government and maintain its image as a nation of innovators. Recognising the complexity of navigating various agencies, Callaghan Innovation envisioned a centralised solution to streamline access to support services, particularly for small business owners. The project was also intended to highlight how government departments could leverage advancements in AI to create proof-of-concept digital tools, at low costs and within three months.

The pilot project was developed to ensure accurate, context-specific, and helpful interactions. Its foundation draws on publicly available data from government sources, ensuring transparency and reliability.

Features and capabilities

Modelled on the familiar ChatGPT experience, GovGPT's features include:

• Conversational interface: GovGPT uses a simple chat interface, allowing users to engage in a conversation with the tool. The tool responds with synthesised summaries from the tools index of publicly available government websites, and encourages the user to contact relevant government departments for more detailed or specific information.
• Small business focus: For the pilot period, GovGPT is only grounded on a subset of government owned webpages aimed at supporting New Zealand small businesses.
• Multi-lingual: GovGPT can communicate in many languages, using the underlying OpenAI ChatGPT 4o large language model (LLM). When the pilot launched in October 2024, GovGPT did not yet support voice inputs nor outputs.
• Privacy and security: GovGPT prioritises user privacy and security. The system prompt and user input are designed to protect the tool against common prompt-injection attacks and misuse. Callaghan Innovation decided to prevent user information or prompts from being recorded or reported on by themselves, the tool, nor the service providers. User data is not being used to further train the large language model.

Development and implementation

The GovGPT pilot was developed in collaboration with private-sector AI experts and public service agencies. The tool uses a foundational LLM from OpenAI, grounded in data and documents sourced from official New Zealand government websites, ensuring its responses align with publicly available policies and guidelines. The project and pilot were run on an iterative and agile model, intending to test the tool publicly and freely before getting it to a 'finished' state.

During its pilot phase, the platform actively sought feedback from small business users to refine its functionalities. Callaghan Innovation will continue to upgrade and refine the tool throughout the 3-month pilot, including releasing more effective prompt infrastructure, and support for voice input and output.

Ethical considerations

Callaghan Innovation prioritised data privacy and security in the design of GovGPT, including:

• partnership with Whāriki Māori Business Network to encourage cultural sensitivity and ensure the tool addressed access barriers and frustrations for Māori businesses
• not recorded user data nor prompts, to ensure the New Zealand public are comfortable using the tool. No data is shared with Microsoft, Callaghan Innovation, nor OpenAI
• focus on enabling the tool to communicate clearly and effectively in the Māori language. Voice input and output were disabled at launch due to limitations on the underlying software's ability to interpret and synthesize Māori speech. Callaghan are working on this functionality in partnership with Kaupapa Māori AI experts.

Reception

GovGPT has been well-received by the New Zealand media and small business community. Small business owners have highlighted its potential to reduce the administrative burden of engaging with government services, though note it needs refinement before it can become the source of truth.

The pilot has spurred discussions on the broader adoption of AI in public services and the balance between innovation and oversight. There is interest from the public in scaling GovGPT to include sources outside of the small business focus, and to include non-government websites.

There was some initial confusion as Callaghan Innovation's GovGPT tool was released a day before a similarly named tool was announced by the Department of Government Enablement of Abu Dhabi, and a month ahead of the United Kingdom releasing a similar chatbot tool.