ENDA: Insights into building a chatbot for open government data

The frictionless access to Open Data via portals and traditional search paradigms currently lacks usability. In order to tackle this problem, we developed a prototype of a chatbot for Open Government Data called ENDA, which is based on the ChatScript framework and the Linked Data specification for public sector datasets DCAT-AP. User requests are mapped to corresponding SPARQL queries using pattern-matching techniques. The initial requirements were derived via a Wizard-of-Oz study involving potential users. During evaluation against the European Data Portal it was revealed that existing limitations hinder the development of a production-grade chatbot.