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Good practice Imported

Askur — Ísland.is's AI Chatbot for Citizen Enquiries

Iceland · Reykjavík · See the Iceland profile · See the Reykjavík profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 35% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Iceland's Ísland.is portal runs Askur, an AI chatbot answering citizen queries around the clock from vetted agency content. Government figures show ~10,000 users a month with an 83-85% satisfactory response rate; the OECD reports it resolves 90% of citizen correspondence.

~10,000 users/month
Users assisted monthly
83-85% %
Satisfactory response rate
90% %
Correspondence resolved (OECD measure)
Askur — Ísland.is's AI Chatbot for Citizen Enquiries

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Digital Iceland (Stafrænt Ísland), Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs
Period
2020-2026
Keywords
digital government, citizen services, AI chatbot

Context

Ísland.is is Iceland's national digital government portal, relaunched in 2020 and run by Digital Iceland (Stafrænt Ísland), a unit of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. Digital Iceland added Askur, an AI chatbot that answers citizen questions about public services.

Activities

Askur draws only on content entered by public-institution staff rather than the open web, intended to limit hallucinated or off-policy answers, and hands users off to a human agent whenever it cannot resolve a query. It runs 24/7 alongside the portal's other digital services.

Results

Government reporting states Askur assists roughly 10,000 users a month, gives a 'satisfactory' response in 83-85% of cases, and escalates only around 10% of conversations to a human agent. The OECD's Digital Government Outlook 2026 independently states Askur resolves 90% of citizen correspondence on Ísland.is.

Conclusions

No independently audited accuracy or bias assessment of Askur has been published, and the government's own performance figures are self-reported. Still, the practice combines a specific technical safeguard — restricting the model to vetted institutional content — with sustained, multi-year operation across a whole-of-government portal.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Built and run in-house on the existing Ísland.is portal; no separate budget figure is published.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Portal relaunched 2020; Askur has operated continuously through 2026.
Staffing & skills
Digital Iceland (Stafrænt Ísland), Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs

Conditions for success

  • Restricting the model to vetted institutional content rather than the open web
  • Automatic hand-off to a human agent when the chatbot cannot resolve a query

Common failure modes

  • No independently audited accuracy or bias assessment has been published

Where it fits

Governance type
national digital-government unit
Scale
whole-of-government portal
Income level
high income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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