Voice Enabling e-Gov Applications using InternetSpeech Voice Internet Technology,

netECHOÆ

Voice Internet Technology For e-Gov ñ an imperative

e-Governance is the computerization and automation of common

administrative processes (including government processes) to ensure
more transparency, efficiency and service orientation using ICT and
electronic media. Thus the goal of e-Governance is to lowering costs,
improving efficiency and generally providing better services to
citizens.
e-Governance is improving the lives of billions of people worldwide
and is integrating government services in a way never seen before.
Linux with its low cost, high security and open standards is rapidly
becoming the driving force behind this revolution.

It is important to further clarify the benefits of e-Governance with

some real examples to appreciate the need of e-Governance.

A. Make Government services hassle-free, faster, cheaper,

more inclusive and ìat citizens doorstepsî.
B. Bring efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and
accountability to administration. C. Enable peopleís voice in
decision making (as people can directly interact
electronically)
D. Minimize corruption (as electronic processing
eliminates/automates major steps for
possible corruption)

A few Examples:
1. Accessing Public Records seamlessly in an automated way ñ citizens will be able
to access public records (like Land related forms, Birth Certificates, University
Admission forms and the like), fill necessary forms and submit them
automatically on their own. Several steps of the Government existing processes in
this regard will be automated saving huge costs, improving efficiency and with a
great customer service.
2. Bill Payment ñ users will be able to pay various bills like electric bill, water bill,
gas bill without staying in a long line.
3. E-procurement ñ Govt. will be able to make its procurement process very
effective by automating it using ICT.
4. Job service ñ various job related services can be automated making it very useful
and simple for users.
5. Government administrative processes (file transfer, entering data in files,
analyzing comments, sharing files to all involved etc) will be very simplified.

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Thus, the need for e-Gov is very clear. It is important to note that
because of the large Digital Divide, high population density, many
people under the poverty line and the like, the need for e-Gov need is
more prominent in the developing countries. But there are large
Digital Divides in some sections of population in the developed
countries as well (e.g. in U.S. there is a large Digital Divide in Native
Indians as well as in rural areas). So,
e-Gov is needed for all countries.

However, e-Gov with traditional methods would still require to have a

computer or a similar device. This is a critical issue for many people at
the base of the pyramid because of four main reasons: affordability,
difficult to learn how to use a computer, difficult to use a computer (or
a similar device) and illiteracy.

This is where Voice Internet technology makes a big difference as

it is very affordable, does not require any literacy and very easy to
learn & use. Accordingly, Voice Internet can bring the benefits of e-
Gov to much more people as number of phone far outstrips the
number of computers (computer represent only 14% of total phone
population as there are 550million connected computers versus over
5 billion total phones in the world).

Value Proposition by Voice Enabling with InternetSpeechís Voice Internet

Technology, netECHO
InternetSpeechís Voice Internet technologies, netECHO can provide
cost effective voice enabled solutions to the e-Gov industry. The
voice platform, netECHO offered by InternetSpeech automates voice
enabling of web sites and applications without site or content
modifications; it is multilingual and offers V-commerce capabilities.

IS using netECHO can provide a totally integrated solution that

actually uses the web site as the database for callers. This approach
eliminates the need to create and maintain separate voice and data
help sites and the need to create special content and flow to access by
IVR. Our service offering will include:

• Development of Speech User Interface (SUI) based on business logic

and requirements.

• Customization of netECHO features to better fit with the applications

• Integration of netECHO with the existing web infrastructure

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Typical solution Architecture using netECHO

Internet

netECHO Internet Interface

TTS Phon e SR
(Text to Speech) (Speech Recognition)
rd Interface
3 Party rd
3 Party

Search A-Browse

v-Commerce Surf
email Voicemail

Our solution retrieves and renders text on any site or application

without site or content modification. netECHO software resides at the
service provider and its Intelligent Agent automatically renders
existing visual Internet content into short, precise, easily navigable
and meaningful audio.

Example Applications:
♦ General E-Gov applications

♦ Accessing reports via voice.

♦ Transactions by Voice (money transfer, payment,..)

♦ Call Center and CRM

Key Benefits
• Increased ROI
• Greater level of customer satisfaction
• Consistent service through automation
• Shorter call times through easy navigation and elimination of hold
time as compared to a human operator or a DTMF system.
• Reduction in operational cost through automation and shorter call
times
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 Voice Enabling e-Gov Applications using InternetSpeech Voice Internet Technology,
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• Better service through better call handling capacity and lesser

dropped calls.

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• Easy access to other Internet services (e.g. after finishing e-Gov, a
users can go to email, search or shopping application). netECHO
basically makes it a web based IVR so that user can easily access
all web related features and applications.

Other Key Points to

Note:
1. Voice e-Gov using general Voice Internet Versus Custom Voice
Internet
The method described above uses Custom Voice Internet for Voice
e-Gov where the
net ECHO core ìrendering engineî is used with a Custom Front
end dialogue that is fine tuned for e-Gov on a specific e-Gov
website. However, the Form Filling feature in net ECHO can also
be used to do all e-Gov related features. In this case, user would
use the general ìForm Fillingî command as opposed to naturally
filling forms using Custom front end Voice dialogue.

2. Security Issue
Obviously, password and user id are not secured in any voice
system. To ensure that we
have a secured e-Gov application, net ECHO has two options:
a. Using Caller ID (i.e. ANI) so that a user would need to call from
some specific pre-
registered phone number)
b. Additional security steps / questions if a user is allowed to use
any phone

3. Regulatory Issue
For e-Gov, regulatory issue may not be a real issue.
However, net ECHO can accommodate regulatory issues, if
any.