Case study · civic information on NYO
BetterCalatagan answers from the public record
BetterCalatagan is an independent civic-information portal for Calatagan, Batangas. Every figure is tied to its evidence, and its live assistant answers from those published records in English, Filipino or Taglish, with NYO as its first model route.
Independent civic project
BetterCalatagan is not the official website of the Municipality of Calatagan and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by any government agency. It is part of the volunteer-built BetterGov.ph and Better LGU community.
Evidence before answers
A civic portal that shows its work
Public records for one town are spread across census tables, disclosure filings, archived pages and national databases. BetterCalatagan brings them together, but it does not publish a number simply because one can be found.
Every record carries its sources, reference period, review date and evidence strength. The test suite blocks unsourced records, future-dated checks and figures that do not reconcile. Facts the project cannot stand behind are withheld, with the reason shown publicly.
44
published pages
Services, government, statistics and transparency in one public guide.
25
barangay profiles
Each profile is built from records the project can trace and check.
8
open datasets
Machine-readable civic data with the same provenance shown on the site.
838
finance checks
Arithmetic checks across fourteen quarters of municipal filings.
How Ask BetterCalatagan works
The assistant can only answer from what the site publishes. Retrieval finds the record, NYO supplies the first model route, and application checks decide what reaches the reader.
- 01
Ask naturally
A resident asks in English, Filipino or Taglish from the search box available across the site.
- 02
Retrieve the record
The assistant searches passages built from BetterCalatagan's published pages and selects the most relevant sourced material.
- 03
Answer, cite and check
NYO supplies the first model route. Before an answer appears, the application checks its figures and restricted claims, then links readers back to the source pages.
Why NYO
A standard connection
The assistant calls NYO through one OpenAI-compatible endpoint and one project key. The model layer stays separate from the civic portal and can change without rebuilding the public data system.
Answers how residents ask
BetterCalatagan supports English, Filipino and Taglish questions. Its selected models sit behind the same NYO endpoint, so the project can evaluate and reorder them without changing the chat interface.
Chosen against real questions
The repository includes a regression set for facts, finances, history, withheld items, prompt injection, Filipino and follow-up questions. NYO's routes were selected against that work, not added as a generic chatbot layer.
Failure stays graceful
NYO is the first route in a documented model chain. If it cannot begin an answer, the assistant can use a separately configured fallback, while BetterCalatagan's own checks still decide whether the result may be shown.
Building an assistant people need to trust?
Keep your own sources and checks, then connect the model layer through one governed endpoint.
BetterCalatagan is independently built and maintained. It is not an official government website. NYO provides the primary model route described here and nothing else.