We will present how the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic has introduced an AI-based chatbot to simplify and speed up data collection on pupils and teachers in schools to allocate funding.

In a period of annual data collection involving thousands of schools, there is a lot of pressure on the Ministry's staff, who have to deal with many queries and confusion from school representatives. The AI-based solution has enabled instant and 24/7 responses to the most common data recording and completion questions, relieving the Ministry of many phone and email queries. Daily, the AI answered 1,500-2,000 questions from school representatives. In addition, the chatbot also allowed users to send more complex queries directly to the Ministry's methodologists via the ticketing system. This digital tool simplified and streamlined communication, reduced the administrative burden and increased the fluidity of the data collection process. This pilot project has demonstrated the benefits of an AI solution for the Ministry, and we believe that it will continue to aid data collection in the future with a more widespread scope.