ARTA launches AI-powered electronic complaint system

THE Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) said it launched on Wednesday an electronic complaints management system (e-CMS) to allow direct filing of complaints online.

At the Ease of Doing Business Conference, ARTA Secretary Ernesto V. Perez said that the e-CMS will also make use of artificial intelligence (AI) in receiving and handling complaints.

“As you know, ARTA has a twin mandate: one is to enable and capacitate all government agencies to comply with the ease of doing business law, and the second is to investigate and file charges in case of violations of the law,” Mr. Perez said. 

“The e-CMS facilitates filing, sorting, managing, drafting resolutions, and tracking the status of public complaints,” he said.

He said that as the launch of the e-CMS is expected to increase the number of complaints the agency will be receiving. As such, ARTA is seeking more staff to handle the increased volume.

“Our proposal (is) to further strengthen the mandate of ARTA because, as we will be launching this e-CMS, we anticipate that we will be deluged with complaints and we do not have enough lawyers to handle them,” he said.

“We have a high turnover rate because our lawyers transfer to the private sector… So I hope that we are able to not only add lawyers but at least upgrade the salary grade of our lawyers,” he added.

At the conference, ARTA Deputy Director General for Legal Geneses R. Abot said ARTA has so far received 23,325 complaints since 2018.

“Out of those, 23,000, or 98.29%, were resolved or referred to different agencies… while the remaining 399 cases are still active,” he said.

“There is a steady increase in the number of complaints. As of October, we received 5,473, and the year is not yet over. We are expecting again an increase in 2025, which is why it is paramount for us to develop an e-CMS,” he added. 

The e-CMS will also leverage AI capabilities, including natural language processing (NLP) and ARTABLE predictive features. The system then will automatically sort and store complaints to ensure that no issue is missed.

Apart from automation, the system will also make use of AI to generate queries based on user intent, analyze sentiment to gauge urgency, recognize entities to provide contextual relevance, and predict possible outcomes.

“With the full implementation of this system, we will be able to receive complaints 24/7, so we expect a large number of complaints that we will receive, and I hope our legal department will be ready for it,” he added. — Justine Irish D. Tabile