Development of interactive virtual voice portals to provide municipal information

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a Voice Portal designed to provide municipal information by phone. It includes the set of modules required to automatically recognize users' utterances, understand their meaning, decide the following response and generate a speech response. The different functionalities include to consult information about the City Council, access city information, carry out several steps and procedures, complete surveys, access citizen's mailbox to leave messages for suggestions and complaints, and be transferred to the City Council to be attended by a teleoperator. The voice portal is, therefore, pioneer in offering an extensive and comprehensive range of public services accessible through speech, creating a new communication channel which is useful, efficient, and easy to use. In addition, the voice portal improves the support of public services by increasing the availability, flexibility, control and reducing costs and missed calls. The paper describes the application software, infrastructures required for its operation 24 hours a day, and preliminary results of a quality assessment. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.