Letters | Revamp 1823 complaints app to serve Hongkongers better

It has been 10 years since the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer introduced the 1823 mobile phone app to handle inquiries and complaints from the public on behalf of 23 government departments. Although the 1823 team at the Efficiency Office has successfully saved time for their colleagues in these departments, the mobile phone app must be revamped to respond to enquiries and complaints in real time – as people still prefer to contact the government via phone calls.

In 2019, a total of 5.16 million enquiries were received by the 1823 team and it managed to handle 99 per cent of the inquiries without referrals to the respective departments. Yet, more than 87 per cent of these inquiries were received from city residents calling the 1823 number, in contrast to about 13 per cent of the inquiries submitted via the mobile phone app or email.

Although the Efficiency Office claims that roughly the same amount of manpower was devoted to dealing with phone and written inquiries by proportion, the huge number of phone inquiries may hinder the development of new technologies such as chatbot and machine learning that can automate the processing of written inquiries.

In order to further enhance the productivity of the 1823 team, the government should redesign the 1823 app and enable it to respond to inquiries in real time.

Yiwen Wang, Rui Min, Kowloon Tong