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HIP makes government communication more human

The ELSA Lab Poverty & Debt is developing, together with HIP, a tool that makes letters easy to understand without compromising their legal validity. HIP stands for Clear, Intelligent, and Productive and was developed in collaboration with the Brightlands Smart Services Campus and PNA Group.

How can artificial intelligence contribute to a society without poverty and problematic debt?
This is the central question explored by the ELSA Lab Poverty & Debt, a collaboration between the Brightlands Smart Services Campus and various knowledge institutions like Maastricht University, governments, companies, and citizens. ELSA stands for Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of AI. Within the lab, partners work together on technological innovations that support people living in poverty. In this series, we highlight several of these AI-driven solutions—from clearer government communication to smarter debt assistance: tools with a mission to reduce poverty and debt.

 

A government letter in HIP language

Do you remember the OHRA commercial with the purple crocodile? A girl tries to retrieve her lost inflatable crocodile, which she can clearly see behind the counter. But it’s not that simple: she has to fill out a form, make an appointment. That crocodile became the symbol of slow, inaccessible government communication in 2021. But has anything really changed since then?

Government letters are often filled with complicated terms that make you think halfway through: “Wait, what do they actually mean?” This leads to stress, confusion, and missed appointments. And for people already struggling financially, it can push them even deeper into trouble. Nadine Beks van Raaij found this unacceptable. During her Master’s in Data Science at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS), she researched whether artificial intelligence could help the government communicate more clearly without losing legal accuracy. The result: the HIP Communication Assistant, a digital tool that helps civil servants write letters people can actually understand.

During her research in 2023, Nadine asked 72 people from various backgrounds and education levels to read government letters, both in their original form and in a simplified version. The results were striking: comprehension increased from 66 percent to more than 90 percent. This shows that many government letters today are still understood only halfway, but HIP proves that it can be done differently.

How HIP makes a difference

It is an online tool that helps government employees write accessible letters. “Imagine you’re a civil servant and you’re unsure whether your text is understandable,” Nadine explains. “You simply paste the text into the HIP environment and let the assistant review it.”

The assistant supports employees in three ways:

  • Automatically detecting personal data, so it can easily be removed.
  • Simplifying the text by creating shorter, clearer sentences.
  • Adding a glossary at the bottom of the letter that explains difficult terms such as Wmo, pgb, or objection in plain language.

Simplifying government letters is especially important for people living in poverty or debt, as they receive more official correspondence than average. Clearer communication helps prevent misunderstandings and enables citizens to take action more quickly to improve their situation.

 

Before and after HIP

The HIP Communication Assistant makes texts easy to understand while preserving their legal validity.

Before:

“If, in view of the provisions of the Social Support Act 2015, you believe that you may be eligible for an individual support measure, you must submit a substantiated application to the municipal executive, including the required supporting documents.”

After: 

“Do you think you are entitled to support under the Social Support Act (Wmo)? Then you can submit an application to the municipality. In your letter, explain why you need help and include supporting documents, for example from your doctor.

Wmo = The Social Support Act helps people live independently for as long as possible and participate in society. The municipality can support you with, for example, household assistance, a wheelchair, transportation, or a home modification such as a stairlift.”

HIP Communicatie Assistent
HIP flow

Made & Saved in Limburg

HIP offers many advantages compared to other large language models, such as ChatGPT. “Nadine explains: ‘The servers are located in the Netherlands, which means data is not transferred to places like the United States. That’s essential for many government organizations.’ ‘With many generic AI tools, you never really know where your data ends up or whether it is being used to train models. With HIP, everything stays local and secure.’ HIP is currently being further developed in collaboration with GPT-NL, the Dutch language model built entirely from Dutch data sources.

 

And the future of HIP?

The tool currently works through a web browser. “That’s convenient, but not yet ideal,” Nadine explains. “Many municipalities work in Word or Outlook, so we are now exploring how to integrate HIP directly into those applications.” She hopes that more municipalities will join the pilot in the future. “And we are collaborating with GPT-NL, a Dutch language model developed using exclusively Dutch data, to teach this model how to simplify government letters as well.”

Although Nadine works with AI every day, she is convinced that humans should always remain in control: “AI should never make decisions on its own, but it can provide tremendous support by bringing information together, creating clarity, and helping ensure that important details aren’t overlooked.”

AI should never make decisions on its own, but it can provide tremendous support by bringing information together, creating clarity, and helping ensure that important details aren’t overlooked.

How municipalities are using it

A pilot with HIP is currently running in Nijmegen. Employees use the system when writing letters or responding to emails they find difficult. “Sometimes they receive a message from a resident that they struggle to interpret,” Nadine says. “That’s when HIP helps by summarizing the message or suggesting an appropriate response.” Employees at the Municipality of Nijmegen are enthusiastic: “The clear language and short sentences make the text accessible, and the glossary at the bottom of the letters is a valuable addition for residents covered by the Wmo and the Youth Act.”

Still keeping up?

An incomprehensible government letter can be the difference between receiving help or falling deeper into problems. People living in poverty or debt receive these kinds of letters more often than average, which increases the risk of misunderstandings. In Limburg, an AI tool is being developed to help prevent this and it’s working surprisingly well. Finally, a letter everyone can understand.

Municipalities that want to join the pilots or learn more can contact the Brightlands ELSA Lab on Poverty & Debt or PNA Group. Because truly clear communication doesn’t start with rules, it starts with the willingness to understand one another better.

 

Source: Brightlands newsletter

Contact
Paul Beijer (Program manager ELSE Lab Poverty and Depts)

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