Imagine: you are a municipal official urgently searching for information on a specific policy subject. You visit the VNG website, type in your search term, and get... seven pages of results. You click, read, summarize, and filter. By the time you have the answer, your valuable time has evaporated.

This was the reality that VNG wanted to change. After all, the association exists to strengthen municipalities by pooling interests and providing practical support. That is the core of their reason for existence: ensuring that local governments can optimally perform their societal duties. A website that 'hides' information rather than unlocks it directly obstructs that goal.

The urgency of the new tech landscape

We live in a time where technological developments follow each other at a rapid pace. The market is flooded with new chatbots, generative AI tools, and innovative software solutions. For many organizations, this feels like a maze of choices. However, standing still is not an option; the current tech landscape demands that organizations at least learn to understand how to responsibly deploy these technologies.

Remy, project leader at VNG, saw this wave approaching the organization. "The technology develops faster than we can sometimes keep up with," says Remy. "If you as a supporting organization do not move along, a backlog is created. We don’t need to be the absolute frontrunner, but we do need to understand what power we can leverage for our members." 

Hands-on learning: The role of Vragen.ai

To not only talk theoretically about AI, VNG sought a way to truly 'get their hands dirty'. This is where the collaboration with Vragen.ai came into play. For VNG, it was not a matter of simply purchasing a product, but a conscious choice for a hands-on learning trajectory.

By using Vragen.ai as an experimental layer on top of the website, the team could directly experience what happens in practice when an AI model works with municipal data. It helped VNG to get rapid answers to crucial questions:

• How does a language model respond to complex legal texts?

• What happens when the source information is fragmented?

• And how does it feel for a user to engage in a dialogue instead of entering a search term?

• What else do you encounter when you start working with AI and how does your own organization react to it?

"The collaboration with the experts gave us the safe environment we needed to simply act," Remy explains. "No lengthy reports beforehand, but direct testing and adjustments. That is the only way to really build AI literacy within your organization." 

Ethics and Open Source: The broader perspective

Although the pilot with Vragen.ai provided valuable insights, VNG remains vigilant about its independent role. As a public association, it is essential not to become dependent on one supplier.

How do you ensure trust and quality?

Of course, there were concerns beforehand about 'hallucinations' or overly assertive answers. By keeping the experiment small and directly involving experts from the organization (such as lawyers and spokespersons), that fear was transformed into grip. In practice, the answers turned out to be surprisingly strong.

Today, monitoring is a regular part. Editors and the customer contact center participate weekly:

• Are the answers substantively correct?

• Is the data that the AI retrieves up-to-date?

• Why does the AI give a different answer than a staff member? 

Vision for the future: The web becomes 'conversational'

The pilot has shown that the traditional website, where you have to dig through menus yourself, is changing. We are moving to a 'conversation-driven' web. Systems understand context and provide answers instead of just a list of links.

For VNG, this is just the beginning. Deploying AI on your website increases both efficiency and user experience. Through smart automation, visitors are helped faster, content remains current and relevant, and processes like search functionality or  customer service are significantly improved. AI not only makes your site smarter but also more personal and effective in achieving your goals.