People living in Jeju or Sejong will soon be able to receive public administrative services at any time through the KakaoTalk Chatbot.

Last month, Kakao Enterprise signed an agreement on implementing the ‘Kakao i Connect Talk’ with Sejong Special Self-Governing City Hall, Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Government, and Jeju City Hall last month. Kakao i Connect Talk is an AI-based customer service platform that combines the KakaoTalk Channel and Chatbot. The implementing agencies can operate the services quickly and efficiently without having to construct a separate system or develop apps. Users can receive public services 24 hours a day, 365 days a year via KakaoTalk.

The contract with the Jeju Provincial Government is the first case of introducing Kakao i Connect Talk through a ‘digital service specialized contract system.’ The digital service specialized contract system allows public institutes to rapidly implement necessary digital services. Kakao i Connect Talk passed screening for the first time for convergence services last year and entered the public IT market in earnest.

Kakao Enterprise plans to complete construction of the service within the year together with Jeju Provincial Government and begin services by next year. By simply writing “Check mobile electronic bills” in the Jeju Provincial Office chatbot, users will be able to check the digital bill linked to the KakaoPay bills box without requiring complicated authentication procedures.

Pilot services are scheduled to begin by the end of the year with Jeju and Sejong. Once the services are implemented, residents of Jeju and Sejong will be able to easily and conveniently search and user public services in various sectors such as civil petitions, tax, transportation, welfare, and tourism anywhere, anytime. For example, by entering, “When is the day for throwing out recyclables?” in the chatbot, it will provide information on daily disposal policies.

In addition, basic information such as real-time COVID-19 updates, various civil petition filing and handling methods, information on representatives, directions to public agencies, parking information, and connecting to the customer center, as well as services such as downloading civil petition documents, issuing passports, and viewing and paying local taxes can be utilized with Kakao i Connect Talk.

Kakao Enterprise CEO Baek Sang-yeop stated, “Thanks to the various fostering policies and institutional support by the government as of late, it has become possible to promptly support digital innovation of public institutes,” and added, “As the demand for contact-free administrative processing has been rapidly growing, we will provide full support so that more agencies will be able to quickly and smoothly communicate with citizens.”