The government on Thursday announced new initiatives to improve the efficiency of its 24-hour one-stop call centre hotline 1823 through the use of artificial intelligence.

Acting Commissioner for Digital Policy Daniel Cheung said the 1823 centre handled about 7.5 million enquiries last year.

He said AI would streamline case triage and referral.

He added the technology could help identify priority cases, cutting processing time from days to just hours.

"The 1823 hotline is an important bridge between the government and the public," Cheung said.

"To improve service efficiency, we have already adopted AI and other innovative technologies to support digital self-service.

"We are also introducing automation and intelligence in areas like receiving requests, case triage and referral – so our frontline staff can focus more on handling complex cases."

Deputy Commissioner for Data Governance Ng Ping-chung said the Digital Policy Office will start trialling agentic AI – a more advanced form of AI that can act on its own – before gradually expanding it to other government departments.

"We can imagine it can handle multiple-step process," he said.

"For example, document checking, summary writing, search, it's all not only just one single step, but it can mix a few tasks together to get the output at the end.

"More importantly, we want to start with a safe and controlled approach to expand agentic AI."



Edited by Tony Sabine