MyMSDChat

Team Name

Gone with the Win

Team Members

Project Description

In a COVID world, where face-to-face contact may not always possible, how do we ensure that individuals can get the support they need in times of uncertainty?

MyMSDChat is a chatbot solution to help Work and Income New Zealand cope with increased demand on their resources, and gather data about specific cases.

The MyMSDChat app has 3 main functions
- It ask’s key fielding questions and provide responses and information
- Provides the user with advice and instruction on what to do
- And gathers data for case workers

Benefit of using MyMSDChat in this situation:
- Can feedback to users in realtime without consuming resources
- Can resolve simple to intermediate requests in realtime
- Can aggregate data and save to a case number to take the strain of case workers

Data Story

Key Facts
1. The unemployment rate fell to 4.0 percent.
a) For men, the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, down from 4.0 percent last quarter.
b) For women, the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, up from 4.3 percent.
2. The employment rate fell to 66.9 percent.
3. Average weekly earnings (including overtime) fell 2.8 percent
4. Wage rates increased 2.1 percent annually.
a) Private sector wages increased by 1.7 percent over the year.
b) Public sector wages increased by 3.0 percent over the year.
5. The number of young people who were NEET increased by 13,000 over the year.(Not in Education, Employment or Training)
a) 5,000 more young men were NEET.
b) 8,000 more young women were NEET
6. 15 to 24 year olds were majorly unemployeed
7. As benefit numbers have grown, so too has the demand for food grants.
Last week, MSD handed out more than 67,000 food grants - down from a peak of almost 70,000 a week earlier.
8. There were 184,404 people on Jobseeker benefit at the end of April 2020 and it is still on the increase.
9. The Ministry of Social Development is working to prompt more than 30,000 people who might be eligible for the Covid-19 Income Relief Payment (CIRP) to claim what they are entitled to – and potentially double their income.
10. More troubling are the 54,000 jobs who have been supported for the first time in the last five weeks, and seem to be the most vulnerable when the wage subsidy ends.
11. Treasury released its most up-to-date economic forecasts earlier this month to coincide with the Budget. Those forecasts showed unemployment surging to a peak 9.8 per cent by September this year, but dropping to just 5.7 per cent by 2022.