IT Award Finalist: AI for Submissions to the Long Term Plan
Tracks
Plenary/IT Room: Rongomātāne A
| Tuesday, November 19, 2024 |
| 11:30 AM - 12:00 PM |
| Breakout Room A, Rongomātāne A |
Overview
Jane McLeod + Gardner Bickford, Nelson City Council
Speaker
Jane Mcleod
CIO
Nelson City Council
AI for Submissions to the Long Term Plan
Project Description
Faced with a tight long-term plan timeframe, we needed innovative solutions to deliver the required outcomes to Elected Members and our community. In collaboration with a local AI specialist, Nelson City Council harnessed emerging technology to develop a secure solution that reduced staff toil, provided deeper insights into community submissions, and automated our Long Term Plan process.
The tool analysed community submissions received through our Consult 24 system using Open AI. It assessed sentiments such as agreement, disagreement, neutrality, and other emotions regarding the eight key issues facing Nelson: rates affordability, buy-outs of private properties affected by slips, council’s forestry approach, Marina CCO proposal, Housing Reserve Fund changes, all-weather sports turf, Tāhunanui Beach facilities, and a potential City Arts Hub.
Understanding that AI is still a developing technology we knew that the output would need a lot of staff review, but the tool was able to assist with the generation of the draft report for Elected Members, aiding them in their deliberations. This allowed staff to focus on ensuring the information provided to the Council gave a clear picture of the 1500 submissions received, and the tool assisted by by distilling the essence of the public submissions into auditable tables of data.
Our staff told the project team that during previous submission deliberations, Elected Members had often asked questions about community views on other matters, not included in the deliberations report to aid in their decision making. Understanding this requirement meant that we were able to include the capability to ask quick questions of the AI and provide information to the elected members within minutes.
Once the LTP had been signed off, previously staff undertook the very time-consuming process of preparing individual replies to submitters to advise them of the decisions reached by Council on the issues they had talked about in their submission. We were able to use the AI to prepare these responses for us, and just have a staff member review them and send to the submitter.
The tool has been created so that it can be used for different submission types – we are currently updating it so that it can provide insight from comments made via our Shape Nelson website on various infrastructure initiatives.
The tool analysed community submissions received through our Consult 24 system using Open AI. It assessed sentiments such as agreement, disagreement, neutrality, and other emotions regarding the eight key issues facing Nelson: rates affordability, buy-outs of private properties affected by slips, council’s forestry approach, Marina CCO proposal, Housing Reserve Fund changes, all-weather sports turf, Tāhunanui Beach facilities, and a potential City Arts Hub.
Understanding that AI is still a developing technology we knew that the output would need a lot of staff review, but the tool was able to assist with the generation of the draft report for Elected Members, aiding them in their deliberations. This allowed staff to focus on ensuring the information provided to the Council gave a clear picture of the 1500 submissions received, and the tool assisted by by distilling the essence of the public submissions into auditable tables of data.
Our staff told the project team that during previous submission deliberations, Elected Members had often asked questions about community views on other matters, not included in the deliberations report to aid in their decision making. Understanding this requirement meant that we were able to include the capability to ask quick questions of the AI and provide information to the elected members within minutes.
Once the LTP had been signed off, previously staff undertook the very time-consuming process of preparing individual replies to submitters to advise them of the decisions reached by Council on the issues they had talked about in their submission. We were able to use the AI to prepare these responses for us, and just have a staff member review them and send to the submitter.
The tool has been created so that it can be used for different submission types – we are currently updating it so that it can provide insight from comments made via our Shape Nelson website on various infrastructure initiatives.
Biography
