Beijing has created an overall design for the development of an urban governance system based on the advanced experiences of urban governance and rescue services in China and other countries and regions, in response to rapid expansion and transformation of the economy and society. Likewise, Beijing's government service hotline (telephone number: 12345) has undergone several adjustments and upgrades over 30 years.

When the "Mayor's Hotline" was initially launched in 1987, only three operators and one single line were available. Today, the "Citizen's Hotline" has 750 channels and over 1,700 operators. Beijing's 12345 Hotline now offers comprehensive services over many channels, including phone, Internet, WeChat, and Weibo. In addition, for better international services, the 12345 "Swift Response to Public Complaints" Government Service Center can answer calls in eight languages, including English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic to meet the needs of different groups and help solve the problems of people in the city.

From January to September 2024, Beijing's 12345 Hotline received 17.715 million calls from the public. Beijing has improved its "intelligent services" in response to vast amounts of data related to people's concerns. The goal is to increase operators' efficiency in terms of accepting, forwarding, and returning calls and explore the possibilities of establishing a completely attentive and intelligent hotline.

For instance, the intelligent agent assistant system can instantly transcribe conversations between citizens and operators, displaying transcriptions on auxiliary screens. Operators can generate work orders by editing the content to improve filing efficiency. Furthermore, the system can help and direct operators in responding to inquiries by intelligently recommending the knowledge base's entries in real-time based on the conversation, saving operators from searching manually. In 2024, the Center piloted the launch of a robot for intelligent callback to learn the responsivity to and resolution rate of citizens' appeals and their satisfaction level.

Through systematic data integration and intelligent administration, the city's 12345 Hotline will also consistently enhance the digitalization of the "Swift Response to Public Complaints" mechanism and facilitate smarter processing of public complaints in the future.

(Sources: China Daily, Beijing Daily)