CROYDON IN CRISIS: Without any advance notice, the borough’s bureaucrats have unleashed on the public an imperfect system to handle Council Tax enquiries. EXCLUSIVE by KEN LEE, Town Hall reporter
Live now!: how council staff were advised of the launch of the AI Assistant on the Fisher’s Folly intranet
The robots have started their takeover of Croydon Council. And so far, the council admits, they are only working properly 80% of the time.
Croydon Council is, of course, the local authority that bans its staff from finding out about what is going on in their own borough. It also seems to be a council that doesn’t want Croydon residents to find out that they are being used as part of an experiment for the borough’s bureaucrats’ new “customer-facing” Artificial Intelligence.
The council quietly slipped out an announcement in a remote corner of the authority’s little-read official website yesterday.
Croydon residents are to be guinea pigs in the cash-strapped council’s cost-saving trial – whether they like it or not. In internal memos, seen by Inside Croydon, the council even says that its flawed AI Assistant system is incapable of redirecting unsuspecting members of the public to a member of staff to help them with their enquiries.
On the council’s internal computer system today, they admit that their contact centre is under-resourced for dealing with the 1million enquiries they receive each year. The volume of calls is “putting immense pressure on service teams”, the council told staff on its intranet.
The “digital first” council does not even appear to be completely certain that information on its website is up-to-date or accurate. “The project group has been working closely with our Council Tax team to make sure our website content is up-to-date, accurate and as user-friendly as possible,” staff were told.
In the message to staff, the council admits that what they have unleashed on the public is not entirely reliable: “It currently works by searching the council website for the information it needs. This is why we have been working closely with teams to ensure our web content is as clear and accurate as possible.
“In its current format it can’t search for information beyond the council website and it can’t transfer residents to a contact centre representative if needed, although it can give them the contact details for onward support.
“As is the nature of this tech, with each iteration it’ll keep getting better and evolving as we go.” So that’s alright then.
Croydon’s AI Assistant is based on Microsoft Copilot. On its public-facing website, the council says: “Croydon’s AI Assistant pilot aims to help residents find answers to their questions about Council Tax more quickly and easily, using the information on the website.
Premature evaluation: the council’s £204,000 per year CEO Katherine Kerswell has unleashed an imperfect AI system on the public
“The council receives more than 1million contacts per year, and the aim is to speed up response times at a time when lots of residents want to quickly find information about their Council Tax.”
But here’s the rub: the council admits that in tests, its AI robots have only been successful for 80% of questions.
The potential for costly errors when handling residents’ Council Tax bills seems to be immense.
Staff have been told: “Where the assistant gives the wrong answer or comes back with nothing, it has mainly been due to our website not having the correct information or being unclear.” Hardly reassuring.
It might seem odd, even a little premature, to unleash on the public a system that can only be relied upon 80% of the time.
But this is cash-strapped Croydon, which has been repeatedly criticised by government commissioners for not making operating savings quickly enough.
Using AI robots was one of the more facile responses to that exercise.
There’s also potentially serious data protection issues arising from the council’s AI trial, especially if the coy council fails to advise residents clearly and in advance of how it is using their data.
On the council website, they say: “This is a pilot, so the council will be gathering lots of feedback and working with residents to see how the assistant works for them.” Hmmm.
The council says that it will still be possible for residents to search for their own answers, and that there will be no change to the council’s understaffed contact centre: “Telephone advisors will still be on hand to help with more complex queries or issues.”
And after Council Tax, Kerswell’s council is preparing for “a wider rollout across the website”.
Croydon’s biggest digital tool, Mayor Jason Perry, appears to be all for this robot-isation of the council’s already much-diminished services. “We are improving our customer experience across the board,” Tory Mayor Perry claimed, though no one believes much of what he says.
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As us peasants can’t even go to see the council now without an “appointment” (not that they would ever give anyone such an appointment ?!), the AI robots must just be there to spy on the few remaining staff they still have. This will probably include their agency staff and (overpriced) consultants/lawyers. but not the local government gravy train directors on their six-figure salaries, as the Kerswell will be protecting them for some unknown reason?
as croydon council is now beginning a trial with artificial intelligence it is amazing to learn that it is only 80 per cent accurate however having AI robots working at the council could not be any worse in time than the people already working at croydon council however the most worrying would be the working out of peoples council tax bills and we are not sure if the people at the council are getting our council tax bills correct anyway we have the highest council tax in the greater london area but with poor local services to match it we are not getting value for money in croydon also i think it is wrong the unemployed and old age pensioners are having to pay the council tax bring it back to the old system of working out council tax according to your savings my council tax in band c is over £2000 pounds a year i had been told that those in band d is over £3000 pounds a year what makes it so bad living in croydon you have to pay two council taxes the council and the greater london authority it would be best to move out of croydon and the greater london authority area that way you would only have one council tax to pay on a local council perhaps AI robots in time would be better at running the council perhaps our politicians also could be replaced by AI robots in time
You’ve been told wrong Steven. Croydon’s Band D is not “over £3000 pounds” but is £2,480 this financial year, of which £490 goes to the GLA.
Council tax has never been based on savings.
People on low incomes, or who are unemployed, or who live by themselves can apply to have their council tax bill reduced
Croydon’s is also not the highest Council Tax in London. It is the second-highest…
Will anyone be able to tell the difference if Jason Perry is an AI automaton that appears only on a screen and the real thing? Perhaps it will assist the Council in reducing it’s lunch expenses.
Nothing but pork pies for lunch for Perry, you are what you eat after all.
Eeh, in my day, AI meant Artificial Insemination. And given how we’re being shafted by rising council tax bills and reduced public services, things haven’t really changed.
Done well, Artificial Intelligence could deliver many benefits, if its starry-eyed proponents are to be believed.
However, Croydon council’s shortages of money and suitably skilled staff and its track record of believing in magic beans like the MyCroydon crap app, Brick by Brick and Valo Smart City, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence
The AI is only as good as the people it learns from. So considering the senior people of the organisation it’s embedded in, 80% is better than I expected.
This is good news. Now those worthless jobsworths can be made redundant.
Not news merely par for the course, news would be something that was successful and served the needs of the residents in Croydon. The chances of IC ever having cause to print such a head line are slim, but to quote MLK I have a dream.
However could Croydon Council think that their website is a font of all knowledge? There should have been a campaign of tidying it up before this was be unleashed on the public. Also, it takes some experience to frame the right questions (known as prompts) and not everyone will have this. Like all computing, it’s a case of “Rubbish in – Rubbish out”. Never mind, once the council web designers and council tax specialists and most of the population know what to do it will work fine 🙂
Around a year, ago, AI was prominent and deified in the news, but as it was tested and explained how it worked, it showed its flaws…
A test CV of a journalist recorded the wrong University, litigation for libel for the company using it and for images, people without the usual complement of fingers, distorted faces and grey skin.
It is not ‘intelligent’ in that, apparently, it works on a massive database of words grabbed from the Internet or copied from authors, and ‘just’ generates a new stream of words based on the probable next most likely word.
I am amazed that it ‘works’ at all.
I get annoyed by simple ‘autocorrect’ which does the opposite, ‘auto-incorrect’.
A system going live with 20% of the answers being wrong is Artificial Stupidity.