AI KNOWLEDGEBASE
Exploring how conversational AI
can transform citizen engagement
PRODUCT
AI Knowledgebase
SECTOR
Government
Work > ANBC
Exploring how conversational AI
can transform citizen engagement.
Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council partnered with Scaffold Digital to explore how artificial intelligence could enhance citizen communication as part of its wider waste harmonisation programme.
Together, we designed and built a cloud-based contact centre prototype using AWS Connect and a large language model (LLM)–driven knowledgebase, enabling natural language interactions across chat and phone channels.
The project represented an important step in understanding how councils can harness AI to deliver clear, accurate, and scalable communication experiences for their residents.
THE CHALLENGE
During large-scale service changes, councils often face a surge in resident queries, many of them repetitive, time-sensitive, or related to individual circumstances such as collection schedules or recycling rules.
Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council wanted to explore how a digital assistant could:
01.
Deliver accurate, consistent information 24/7
02.
Reduce dependency on contact centre resources
03.
Provide residents with an accessible and conversational way to get answers
04.
Create a platform that could be adapted for future council services
OUR APPROACH
Working alongside the Council’s transformation and communication teams, Scaffold Digital developed an AI-assisted contact experience centred on Amazon Connect.
We focused on creating a knowledgebase and retrieval pipeline that ensured every response from the LLM was grounded in verified council data, balancing innovation with the need for accuracy and public trust.
Our approach included:
01. KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURING
Organising policy and service content into a structured dataset for reliable retrieval.
02. CONVERSATIONAL AI DESIGN
Building natural language understanding (NLU) flows and response models.
03. AWS CONNECT INTEGRATION
Supporting both chat and voice experiences, including escalation to live agents.
04. SECURITY AND GOVERNANCE
Ensuring content traceability, privacy, and compliance with public sector standards.
THE SOLUTION
The resulting prototype demonstrated how an AI-powered knowledgebase could work in practice:
Residents could ask natural questions, e.g. “When will my bin be collected?”
The system interpreted intent, matched
data from
the knowledge-base, and generated
contextual responses.
Queries requiring human oversight could be routed to agents
through the same AWS Connect interface.
TECHNOLOGIES USED
BACKEND
Amazon Lex & Lambda
FRONTEND
AWS Connect
QA TOOLS
CloudWatch analytics
DEVOPS TOOLS
Retrieval-augmented knowledgebase
BACKEND
Custom LLM integration
"Scaffold helped us bridge the gap between emerging AI and local government. We’ve successfully integrated LLMs into our AWS environment, creating a responsible roadmap for the future of our citizen-facing services."
-Antrim & Newtownabbey Borough Council
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