Design of ML-based AI System for Mining Public Opinion on E-government Services in Bulgaria

Abstract

Digitalization affects all fields of the modem world including the economic, political, and social aspects of our life. Governments are also involved in this process. Considering the rapid transition towards digital e-services that we evidence since the COVID-19 outbreak, the detection and analysis of public opinion on e-goverament sen-ices becomes even more important. The sentiments and opinions of users on digital public services might be used to foster improvements in the development and implementation of the e-services. In this paper |.ve engage the advances in NLP so as to examine the possibilities to analyze in an automated manner the opinions and sentiments towards e-goverament services expressed by citizens in various social networks in Bulgaria and this is the main goal of our research. For this purpose, we design an integrated ML-based AI system that aims to support decision makers in e-government and public services provision. The system utilizes a variety of data sources - news websites, web forums and other online social networks. To the best of the authors" knowledge, this is the first study that develops a methodology for mining public opinion in Bulgaria based on a combination of NLP and ML techniques, rather than relying on surveys or in-depth interviews.