Say What Amazon App Alexa?? Watch-Out For Those Bots!!

Now we know what stage-stunt Hizzoner John Giles was up to @ MesaConCenter in his State-Of-The City 2020 Speech . . . "Tell me, Alexa"
Voice Tech Startup Qwhery Joins Esri to Connect Smart Cities and Smart Speakers

Eric Hal Schwartz 03.11.2020

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The 411 on Q11Burlington, Ontario-based Qwhery is working on a product called Q11, which brings publicly available municipal data to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. The resulting Alexa skills let people ask about city services and find out what’s happening locally through Echo smart speakers or other Alexa-enabled devices. To make sure the people are connected to the relevant city services, Qwhery uses the Esri Geospatial Cloud, advanced mapping and intelligence platform.

Q11 is named for the 311 phone service many cities offer that connects a caller with municipal departments to take care of things like downed power lines, potholes, or legal matters. When the skill is enabled on Alexa, a user simply has to ask the voice assistant for answers about city services, find out what’s on the calendar, or get information about local officials.

It’s all information provided on public websites, just in the form of a voice. The idea is for the voice skill to take on some of the load of 311 phone calls so that local governments can provide information without overtaxing their workers, yet still gather data about what citizens want to reach out to discuss.

“Municipalities are looking at ways to enhance their citizen engagement . . ."

Now that's a WHOPPER of a statement!

It is true, however, that some city officials, especially current Hizzoner John Giles admit publicly they have a problem with engaging citizens in government > "a problem" they created to avoid scrutiny and oversight.

Most people who live and work and/or pay taxes here in Mesa would tend to agree that City Manager Chris Brady does not want or welcome more attention when he's called on his actions and put in the hot seat to respond to any questions whatsoever.
Financing Sloan Park on the back of 20-year debt for Mesa taxpayers? No problem > we'll just say the stadium(s) were "paid off" by his Ponzi scheme selling-off water-rights to 1140 acres of Pinal County water farm to Saints Holdings LLC.

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Smart Cities Speak UpApplying voice tech to government services is becoming more common as cities experiment with using voice assistants. Mesa, Arizona has set up an Alexa skill to perform similar informational duties for its citizens, including accessing the city calendar and learning about local officials. Mesa also added the option for people to pay their utility bills through the voice app. Amazon also offers utility bill payment directly, a service it began in India, before going worldwide with more than 700 utility companies.
Google Assistant has a similar arrangement with Xcel Energy.
Meanwhile, Estonia wants to set up a voice assistant for the whole country to connect citizens with government services.

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There is NO DISCLAIMER by the City of Mesa government that it does grab all your data and has plans to license all the information it sweeps-up to make money selling it-off to undisclosed third parties.