This research aims to design a chatbot as a technological innovation to support public information openness by the Information and Documentation Management Officer (PPID) of Ponorogo Regency. The design of this chatbot is motivated by the achievement of PPID Ponorogo Regency, which successfully improved its information service quality from the "Towards Informative" category to a position among the top 10 "Informative Regencies" in 2024 at the East Java Public Information Openness Award. Furthermore, the commitment of PPID Ponorogo Regency to providing open and easily accessible public information was a primary motivation for this study. The PPID Ponorogo Regency chatbot was designed using the Botpress platform, which is equipped with Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Question and Answer (QnA) modules to understand natural human language and recognize the user's intent to provide relevant answers. The interface was also developed using the Next.js framework for the website-based chatbot display. The output from Botpress is connected to the website-based chat display using an Application Programming Interface (API). The test results show that the chatbot can accurately answer factual questions, handle follow-up questions contextually, manage typographical errors, and perform simple arithmetic calculations based on its knowledge base. Through this chatbot, the general public can easily access public information by sending text messages with questions, which are then answered automatically based on the data entered into the knowledge base.

Keywords: PPID, Public Information Openness, Chatbot, Botpress