A chatbot with sourced answers: how a local authority stays in control of what it says

Why insist on citing the source

An answer without a source asks for trust. An answer that links to the “School canteen” page or to the published rules can be checked in one click, by the resident and by front-desk staff.

Citations also help internally. When an answer is wrong, you immediately find the page to fix.

Set the scope: what the assistant may read

The authority decides the sources: website pages, news, events, published PDFs, guides to procedures. The assistant answers from that content. When the answer isn't there, it is set up to say so instead of filling the gap with information from elsewhere.

For a public assistant, the simplest rule is to give it only what is already published. This reuse is still a data processing operation in its own right: any content that mentions individuals must be legitimately publishable and indexable.

Keep non-public content out

Resident files, staff data, working documents and anything describing personal situations stay outside the public scope. The safest option is not to give them to the assistant.

Some published documents mention individuals, such as council minutes. Before adding them, check with your data protection officer (DPO) that they may be published online in that form, anonymise any mentions that should not appear, and exclude documents about identifiable individuals. If a document is taken down from your website, remove it from the agent's sources too.

Tell residents they are talking to an AI

The EU AI Act (Regulation 2024/1689, Article 50) provides that people must be informed when they interact with an AI system. A welcome message says so plainly, links to the authority's privacy notice and asks residents not to enter sensitive data.

The authority is the data controller for its residents' data. Natalia acts as a processor under a contract compliant with Article 28 GDPR. For internal use reserved for staff, our answers respect existing access rights.

Plan the handover to staff

A personal situation, a complaint or an out-of-scope question must reach a person. The assistant qualifies the request (subject, contact details, documents) and passes it to the department concerned, by email, as a ticket or as a callback request.

The staff member who picks it up gets a well-framed request without rereading the whole conversation, and the resident doesn't have to repeat everything.

Our agent for resident enquiries in local government

Keep publishing

The assistant depends on the website. Every page published or updated improves its answers, every outdated page makes them worse. Publishing remains the groundwork, and the assistant makes it visible.

The questions asked also show what is missing. A question that comes up often with no page to answer it is a page to write.

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The same agent on the website and in the mailbox

Residents also write by email, often with the same questions. With our Mail agent, the same knowledge base serves both channels: the answer given in the chat and the one drafted for an email rely on the same pages.

For emails, replies can stay as drafts, and a member of staff approves them before sending. Until you switch on automatic sending, category by category, nothing goes out in the authority's name without approval.

Discover our Mail agent

The four rules, and what they prevent