When the going gets tough, the tough get innovative. COVID19 has been one of the most complex and difficult challenges that the world collectively faced. So, when the dreaded virus reached India, there was panic. Not only was there fear of a public health crisis but apprehension over a deluge of information, a lot of which was inadequate and incorrect. Misinformation about the pandemic was spreading rapidly. Sensing that it could escalate well out of their control, the government decided to harness the MyGov platform to set the record straight about COVID19. 

The MyGov portal has been the primary citizen engagement and participatory governance platform of the government for the last 7 years. The website has an extended presence across social media platforms to supplement reach and has 70 million users (across platforms) who have visited the site over a billion times already. To further increase interactivity, MyGov has become active on messaging platforms like WhatsApp (37.5 million users) and Telegram (2.8 million users). To contain the panic and bring a sense of order, the team decided to deploy all these assets to reach out to as many citizens as possible with correct and updated information. This would serve as a single point of information from the government about Covid.

The team mobilized action on multiple fronts simultaneously – new COVID section on the website, myth-buster & fact check campaigns, information on government notifications, lockdowns, medical information and citizen contributions on Covid appropriate practices. But that was not enough.

According to Abhishek Singh, CEO of MyGov, “People wanted to directly ask questions and get the information rather than searching on a portal or scouting for it elsewhere. We were inspired by the WHO chatbot and we wanted to build a similar one, but on WhatsApp, which can answer people’s queries. We spoke to WhatsApp and our partners Haptik, and we launched the Corona Chatbot in just 5-6 days.”

The team pulled out all the stops to get every piece of the puzzle together – information from multiple ministries (Health & Family Welfare, Ayush, Home Affairs, External Affairs, etc.), mobile numbers on which it would run, workflows aligned to questions, customizations and the technology to be able to handle massive volumes. The result was astounding. Within 2 weeks of launch, they had topped 10 million users, and today the count stands at 39 million users. One of the key reasons for this massive response was language localization. While it started with English, followed by Hindi and subsequently other regional languages were also added.

Experience is Key

The interface was kept extremely simple. The conversation starts with the users greeting the chatbot with a “Namaste”. In response, the information menu is provided along with a numeric code against each. Users message the number corresponding to the information they need, and the conversation gets going. You can get a wide range of information like Covid vaccination, government updates, professional advice on improving immunity through Ayush and yoga, Corona symptoms and where to get help. But even this was not enough, and the tough got even more innovative.

“We had to cater to all kinds of users who would not necessarily follow the menu-driven workflow.”, says Abhishek Singh, “So what would happen if someone posted a question like ‘Is Hindi available?’... or just types in ‘vaccination centre’.” 

The chatbot was trained to intelligently accommodate queries other than the standard menu and even respond appropriately. So to the message “is Hindi available”, the chatbot recognizes ‘Hindi’ and automatically changes the language and provides the menu in Hindi to continue the conversation. As another example, to the message ‘how many doses to take?’, the chatbot understands the keyword set to give an appropriate answer. If no keyword is recognized, additional questions will be asked for clarity to progress the interaction.

The AI engine is being continuously trained to improve responses to questions. Every question that it does not understand – irrespective of construct and language – is looked into, mapped to the database of answers from the health ministry, so that the chatbot can give more relevant and appropriate responses. Being API driven, changes and updates to it happen dynamically. Hosted on AWS servers, it connects to the backend through Haptik’s web SDKs to pull data from multiple sources with adequate authorization.

If it Works Well, Make it Work Better

By now the confidence of the team was high. The success of the WhatsApp chatbot was replicated as the Saathi Chatbot on the MyGov.in website, that could converse in English and Hindi. 

“The Saathi Chatbot for the website was meant to cater to people who were not using WhatsApp and were coming directly to our portal,” says Abhishek Singh. “Now the same experience could be provided to all users, where the conversation could be menu-driven or question-driven. The same API driven content was made available seamlessly across both platforms.”

In fact, it worked so well that it was integrated through API interfaces with other government channels like 13 state Covid bots, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare website and the Arogya Set app, as well as other social media channels like Facebook Messenger and Google Maps. If you are on Google Maps and search for MyGov, a button will pop up with which you can initiate a conversation with the chatbot. Each of these solutions is using different AI engines in a seamlessly integrated way.

What Next?

Expand, grow and proliferate. Expand availability to beyond the 13 state chatbots and languages to include the whole country. Grow the user base by improving responsiveness, data accuracy and information segments. Proliferate interfaces to as many digital platforms as possible beyond the current including WhatsApp, Facebook, Google and Koo, to name a few. 

COVID19 is constantly changing the game, and information has never been more vital in the fight against the pandemic. Constantly being updated with scientific facts and certified data is an ongoing activity. MyGov’s versatility and efficacy to address the spread of misinformation forms a crucial element in India’s ensuing fight against COVID19.