White House open-sources chatbot
With 1.5 million messages coming in since the August launch of its Facebook Messenger bot, the White House has opened the code to developers and non-developers alike.
The White House opened the source code for the first government bot on Facebook Messenger in the hope that other governments and developers will use it to build similar services and foster online interactions with their citizens.
In an Oct. 14 blog post, White House Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman said the Drupal module on GitHub comes with step-by-step instructions and boilerplate code that developers can use to launch their own Facebook Messenger bots. The repository also has a few lines about the Obama administration's hopes for the code's future and encouragement for developers to get involved in its distribution.
The goal of using Drupal is to "allow non-developers to create bot interactions (with customized language and workflows), and empower other governments and agencies who already use Drupal to power their digital experiences," Goldman wrote.
President Barack Obama publicly responded to his first message on Facebook on Aug. 26, in an online version of the tradition of presidents answering select citizen letters. Since then, Goldman said Obama has received more than 1.5 million Facebook messages from people all over the world.