Modern city services – Ditzingen introduces an AI‑powered chatbot

City of Ditzingen – Modern city services online: Ditzingen introduces an AI‑powered chatbot.

With around 25,000 residents, the City of Ditzingen is the fifth‑largest municipality in the Ludwigsburg district and combines a strong sense of tradition with forward‑looking development. The economically vibrant city in the western Stuttgart region has long focused on high quality of life and innovative services for its citizens. To further expand its digital offering, Ditzingen worked with Bechtle to implement an AI‑powered chatbot based on Microsoft Azure Cloud Services. The solution makes it easier for users to find information on the city website and enables efficient, intuitive and multilingual communication.

Project details.

Services

Artificial Intelligence
Cloud

Industry

Public sector

Manufacturer

Microsoft

Company size

250 – 1,500 employees

Challenge.

The City of Ditzingen wanted to offer its residents an even better digital experience on its existing municipal website. The aim was to provide a modern, innovative solution in the form of a chatbot that uses AI to give fast and easy access to all available city information—regardless of time, location or language.

Thanks to our collaboration with Bechtle, our website is now even more accessible to all residents. The AI chatbot built with Azure AI Services meets all our expectations. This modern and efficient solution gives everyone quick and easy access to city information—regardless of language or technical knowledge. It’s a major step towards our digital future, and one we’re proud of.

Andreas Heck, Head of IT, City of Ditzingen

Solution.

Working closely with Bechtle, the City of Ditzingen implemented the innovative AI solution it envisioned. The new chatbot is built on Microsoft Azure AI Services and combines Azure OpenAI technology for a powerful language model with Azure AI Search for fast, accurate information retrieval. Bechtle also developed a user‑friendly frontend and integrated it into the city’s website. For the chatbot’s training phase, Bechtle and the City of Ditzingen collected extensive data from all publicly available sources, including departmental contact information, PDF documents and answers to frequently asked questions. By incorporating this data into the AI model, the team ensured that the chatbot could respond to queries reliably and with a high level of precision. The partners aligned requirements closely, connected all relevant data sources and continuously refined the system. The secure and scalable cloud infrastructure also ensures that the chatbot can adapt easily to new content and future needs.

Business benefits.

Intuitive information access – The chatbot makes city information quick and easy to find.
Secure cloud solution – Microsoft Azure provides a reliable and secure platform.
User‑friendly interface – An intuitive design ensures a smooth experience for all website visitors.
Accessible communication – Multilingual AI technology removes language barriers.
Scalable infrastructure – The flexible cloud environment grows with the city’s needs.
Innovation leadership – Ditzingen demonstrates digital leadership and a willingness to embrace new AI technologies.
Improved citizen communication – Direct answers to enquiries reduce the workload for administrative staff.