CivicBot – Serverless WhatsApp Assistant for Civic Issue Management

CivicBot is a fully serverless conversational assistant built on AWS that allows citizens to report civic issues directly through WhatsApp. It leverages AI to classify priority, generate executive summaries for administrators, and enables real-time status notifications without requiring any server infrastructure. This project demonstrates how modern cloud services, conversational AI, and event-driven architecture can be combined to build scalable digital governance platforms.

Overview

CivicBot is designed to reduce friction in civic issue reporting and increase transparency between citizens and municipal teams.

Citizens interact via WhatsApp. Messages are routed through Twilio to an AWS API Gateway webhook, then processed by Amazon Lex V2 and AWS Lambda. All data is stored in DynamoDB and media in S3. Amazon Bedrock Titan models provide priority classification and executive summaries for administrators.

Admins and field staff manage issues using secure REST APIs protected by Amazon Cognito.

Goals

• Simplify issue reporting using natural-language chat

• Provide citizens with tracking IDs and proactive notifications

• Enable data-driven governance using AI-generated summaries

• Use 100 percent serverless architecture for elasticity and low operational overhead

Features

1. Citizen Flows

• Report Issue: Users submit descriptions, GPS or text location, and images via WhatsApp.

• Track Issue Status: Retrieve current status using tracking ID.

• Retrieve Issue ID: Search for forgotten tracking IDs using keywords and location.

• Rate Service: Citizens provide 1–5 star feedback after resolution.

2. Admin / Employee Flows

• Issue Listing & Filtering: Filter by New, Processing, Completed using REST APIs.

• Status Updates: Update issue state and expected completion date.

• AI Summaries: Generate executive dashboards using Bedrock Titan.

3. Automation

• AI Priority Classification: Assigns HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW severity automatically.

• Real-time Notifications: DynamoDB Streams trigger WhatsApp updates.

• Media Handling: Images are securely stored in S3 with optional analysis workflows.

System Architecture

• High-level message flow:

• Data Flow (Report Issue):

AWS Services

Service	Purpose
Amazon Lex V2	NLP intent recognition
AWS Lambda	Stateless orchestration
API Gateway	Webhook + Admin REST APIs
DynamoDB	Issue and session data
S3	Media storage
Amazon Bedrock	AI classification + summaries
Cognito	Admin authentication
Twilio API	WhatsApp integration
CloudWatch	Logs & metrics

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Runtime	AWS Lambda (Python)
Conversational AI	Amazon Lex V2
AI Model	Amazon Bedrock – Titan Text Express
Storage	DynamoDB, S3
Messaging	Twilio WhatsApp API
Auth	Amazon Cognito
API Layer	Amazon API Gateway
Observability	CloudWatch

Data Models

• CivicIssues Table { "IssueID": "a3b72c1e", "Category": "Garbage Overflow", "Description": "Garbage pile near 4th cross", "LocationText": "4th Cross, Ward 12", "GPS": { "lat": 13.06, "long": 77.59 }, "Priority": "HIGH", "Status": "New", "CreatedTimestamp": 1732000000, "StatusLastModified": 1732000100, "ExpectedCompletionDate": "2025-12-02", "Attachments": ["s3://civicbot-media-reports/..."], "Rating": 5 } GSI: Status-Timestamp-index Partition key: Status Sort key: CreatedTimestamp

• UserSessions Table { "UserID": "wa:987654321", "LastIssueID": "a3b72c1e", "History": [], "LastSeen": 1732000200 }

API Endpoints

Method	Path
GET	/issues
GET	/issues?status=New
PUT	/issues/{issueId}
GET	/stats
POST	/webhook

Security & Compliance

• IAM roles use least privilege policies

• Twilio credentials stored in AWS Secrets Manager

• S3 bucket blocks all public access

• Cognito secures Admin APIs

Observability

• Centralized logs in CloudWatch

• Structured JSON logging

• Alarms on error rate and latency

• Retry handling on DynamoDB Streams failures

• CORS and throttling configured in API Gateway