{"id":50449,"date":"2025-11-13T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T01:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/50449\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T01:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T01:02:07","slug":"long-beach-calif-and-the-case-of-the-silenced-chatbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/50449\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach, Calif., and the Case of the Silenced Chatbot"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s possible most residents in Long Beach, Calif., have never heard of Elby. The city-enabled chatbot, known as Ask Elby!<\/a>, never got much air time.<\/p>\n

An unremarkable test phase last year prompted the city to pause the rollout of Elby, following survey satisfaction feedback along the lines of \u201cvery middle of the road,\u201d Ryan Kurtzman, the city\u2019s technology partnerships officer, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really didn\u2019t noticeably improve the user experience, or resolution of issues over traditional search bars or other means of addressing resident inquiries,\u201d Kurtzman said during a panel last week at the second annual GovAI Coalition Summit in San Jose, Calif. The session, \u201cProgress Lab: Real-World Lessons from Failure,\u201d was devoted to public-sector tech officials discussing projects which did not get off the ground, or were hobbled by any number of pitfalls.<\/p>\n

Following an internal test of the chatbot, Long Beach launched a one-month external test with 10 residents, which led to more than 15,000 queries in that month and more than 4,000 users.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe learned a lot,\u201d Kurtzman said, adding, part of what was learned was the AI-powered chatbot often supplied old data, incorrect data, missing links and other bits of digital dead-ends. \u201cWe were getting people saying they were getting press releases and news from 2020 instead of 2024. Things like that. Overall, the system just didn\u2019t really perform in the way that we had hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long Beach decided against proceeding with a full implementation of the project, and instead focused on improving the core technology, which is the website and its search functions, \u201crather than adding on a new layer of AI to that,\u201d Kurtzman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would never call this project a failure, by any means. I consider this very much a learning lesson for us,\u201d he said. \u201cThroughout the process we learned a lot about what we needed to do, what we needed to invest in, and what we didn\u2019t need to focus on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurtzman and his counterparts in Fairfield, Calif., and South Bend, Ind., recounted similar outcomes where technology projects were derailed \u2014 sometimes due to larger structural problems at city hall \u2014 and did not lead to the often-promised improvements in operations, efficiencies or resident services.<\/p>\n

In Fairfield, Eudora Fleischman<\/a>, the city\u2019s IT infrastructure and security manager, recounted what could best be described as a communications breakdown as she explained the rocky rollout of a new dispatching system for the city\u2019s fire stations.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of the IT department actually knew that this project was actually going on,\u201d Fleischman told the room. She ultimately put together an internal city committee to flesh out the project and determine its full scope and cost, which was then presented to the City Council and approved.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we were able to have clarity, direction, and get started on the project, as a unified whole,\u201d said Fleischman, who noted the dispatching system has been in place for two years. <\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering that this required major construction across all of the fire departments in the city, tying into lights, utilities, and automatic shutoff valves for gas stoves and barbecues, it was kind of a big deal that communication was not there,\u201d Fleischman said.<\/p>\n

Anmol Rathore, technology equity manager in the Department of Innovation and Technology at South Bend, recalled an upgrade to the city\u2019s 311 service which worked internally for about a month \u201cand did not scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized we needed to look at the problem more closely,\u201d she told the panel. \u201cYou can optimize for everything and still fail. Because you have to optimize for the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The modernization project offered access to multiple languages with a service available any time of the day, among other features. However, Rathore said, \u201cThe cost outweighed the benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials stressed pilot projects should be designed with performance measures, in order to validate whether the technology solution is addressing the issue for which it was intended. And the projects should be structured for adequate data gathering.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important to be honest with yourselves,\u201d Kurtzman said, noting the common pressure to have a pilot and then move to a wider scale and full implementation. \u201cIt\u2019s OK to admit you\u2019re not ready sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to constantly remind ourselves every day that we are in the people business, we are not in the technology business. \u2026 We have to work for our people,\u201d Rathore said. Once you take a look at the organization, she said, you may start to see the \u201ccracks, within your own organization, in your processes, in your knowledge base management system. And that is a good starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kurtzman said he\u2019d like to return to the chatbot project and \u201cvalidate the problem\u201d with Elby.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are planning to go out and explore this again, but really identifying what the needs are first,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s possible most residents in Long Beach, Calif., have never heard of Elby. The city-enabled chatbot, known as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-50449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}