ABSTRACT
How do you fluidify interactions between elected officials and citizens when the flow of messages is too voluminous to handle with limited staff and resources? The Congress of Brazil has been experimenting with different artificial intelligence-assisted technologies and a chatbot or automated dialogue system to handle citizen questions. With some promising early results behind us, the development of a “virtual assistant service” for lawmakers and citizens will require an understanding of four relevant dimensions: (1) technology, (2) governance, (3) human resources, and (4) ethics. Realizing the benefits of a large-scale communication system powered by political virtual assistants, as considerable as those benefits could prove to be, will demand a complex organization to work properly in parliaments.
