FAQ on "Bonny" Chatbot

Bonny is a chatbot function on GovHK, which can understand Chinese and English. Bonny analyses your inputted texts, tries to understand your needs and searches the most suitable e-Government services and application forms. URLs to relevant webpages will also be provided to facilitate your access to Government services.

Bonny operates on natural languages processing and machine learning technologies. She analyses inputted text to understand your needs and find suitable e-Government services and application forms for you.

Given the great variety of enquiries and limitations of machine learning, Bonny’s response may not be always correct. We will strive to improve Bonny's accuracy by learning the suitable answers to various questions through conversations with users.

Besides, Bonny needs JavaScript to run on. If JavaScript is switched off on your computer, Bonny cannot function properly.

Bonny's main function is to help users find URLs of suitable e-Government services and application forms on websites of Government departments. Other questions, such as application progress and other general enquiries, etc, are outside Bonny's service scope.

Bonny will not fill in application forms nor submit applications for users. To apply for Government services, users shall click the URLs of relevant Government departments and use the e-Government services or download the application forms for applications. Users shall submit their applications according to the application procedures of different Government services.

Bonny supports textual interaction with users. You can use the voice-to-text function of smartphones and tablets to communicate with Bonny.

Bonny supports traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and English. Users can choose different languages with the language menu at the top left hand corner of the dialog pane.

After each enquiry, Bonny would ask "Was I helpful?". You can choose "Yes" or "No" and then fill in your comments. In addition, you can give your comments on Bonny’s service via Help Desk on GovHK website. Your comments are appreciated and we will use them to keep improving Bonny’s service quality.

Bonny is a chatbot service. If you want help from a real customer service representative, please contact GovHK Helpdesk at 183 5500.

Bonny will not request users to provide any personal identifiable information. To secure the protection of your privacy with respect to personal data, you should not provide any personal identifiable information using the function.

After training, Bonny will try to understand whether your questions are related to local weather. If the questions are identified to be related to local weather, Bonny will send the questions to Dr. Tin of the Hong Kong Observatory via Application Programming Interface (API) and obtain the corresponding weather information for you.

Bonny can provide local weather information, including current weather, weather forecast, local weather warnings in force and the information about tropical cyclones, from Dr. Tin of the Hong Kong Observatory. If you need other weather information, please visit the Hong Kong Observatory website.