With over 1.6 million inhabitants, is the second largest city council in Spain. In 2015, its citizen service department received more than 300,000 annual requests and complaints about city management. For 10 years, the Citizen Attention department operated with an open-source tool created by the city council itself called IRIS.
Barcelona City Council received over 300,000 requests annually. Each request was manually categorized by municipal staff, requiring them to choose from 1,500 different options. This manual process was time-consuming and error-prone. If a request was misclassified, it had to be redirected until it reached the correct department, leading to significant delays in resolution. In fact, half of all incoming communications were reassigned.
With over 300,000 requests, there is a need to automate the categorization process to prevent errors and duplicates, and to improve efficiency in distributing requests, thereby reducing response times and providing solutions as quickly as possible.
Requests processed in 2023 at Barcelona City Council:
Average response time at Barcelona City Council
To implement NIRIS tailored to your municipality
The classification process is crucial as it determines which department a citizen's inquiry, complaint, or suggestion is forwarded to. By eliminating errors that lead to inappropriate responses and delays in resolving issues, we ensure a more efficient and effective service.
The classification process is now streamlined and error-reduced thanks to developments by APSL-Nagarro based on machine learning algorithms and natural language processing, a branch of artificial intelligence.
By analyzing the free text that describes the issue reported by citizens, the system suggests the most likely categories for the issue, allowing the user to select the most appropriate one. This enables the Barcelona City Council to efficiently direct citizen inquiries to the relevant departments.
