A government hotline which deals with enquiries, suggestions and complaints is itself leaving the public disappointed, Ombudsman Winnie Chiu said on Thursday, with the service urged to speed up various aspects of its work.

The 1823 hotline is run by the Efficiency Office and as well as gripes about public services, it says it also accepts any compliments.

But it turns out it is less than efficient in getting complaints resolved when it can't work out which government department is responsible for a particular matter, and is "persistently falling short of its performance pledge to answer at least 80 percent of calls within 12 seconds," Chiu said in a report following a direct investigation.

"This office considers that for a call centre dedicated to handling public enquiries and complaints, 1823’s falling short of its own pledge in answering calls persistently between 2018 and 2023 goes against public expectations," the ombudsman said.

"While 1823 has improved the performance in call handling in 2023, and completed the upgrade of telephone system in late December 2023, we urge 1823 to proactively monitor and conduct timely review of the system to further enhance its call answering rate."

Chiu told reporters that one improvement would be to upgrade the service's AI chatbot, which can only handle a few subjects at the moment.

"Currently, the chatbot service provided by 1823 is rather limited. Our recommendation for the Efficiency Office is to use more technology to upgrade the chatbot services, especially where the call receiving capacity of the 1823 is limited," she said.

As for tricky complaints where no government department takes ownership of the matter, Chiu said 1823 should consider passing these cases to district officers of the Home Affairs Department or the Task Force on District Governance, which coordinates issues across different departments and districts.

The Efficiency Office, under the Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau, said it accepted the recommendations made by the ombudsman.