Policy Context and Legal Framework

The project follows objectives shared at European level (Verification and re-launching of the Lisbon objectives). In fact, the Virtual Assistant solution and the Business Intelligence used to interpret data received contribute to the following objectives: gain trust through transparent and accessible services; raise quality and social effectiveness of the institution’s activities; implementation of a net between institutions, workers and social partners; economic efficiency and effectiveness through the strengthening of services focused on customer care, aimed at the reduction of social costs at the expense of who pays and uses the services; increase governance capacity of services supplied by the PA through a tracing process of the outcome of contracts with the citizens and increase the possibility to improve and optimize services based on the outcome of the studies mentioned above. The project is also fully in accordance with the strategic guidelines of the 2007 National eGovernment System.

Implementation and Management Approach

The Vicky project is part of an overall Inps strategy for a better communication with citizens. For this reason, a management system that could handle integration between IT and communication needs was already in place in the organization and had already proven effective with the implementation of previous projects. Therefore, once the need for a new communication model became evident, thanks to the analysis made on channels usage, Inps was able to act immediately. AlmavivA, our partner in this initiative, was contacted as part of a screening for innovative propositions that could value the efforts already made in technology and communication. Different working groups were created with the partner to face different aspects of the proposal. In fact, the partnership not only relates to the development of the technological solution, but involves every aspect of the project. For example, the first data gathered about the solution in the pilot phase (April 2007) was obtained by involving AlmavivA’s employees making them use Vicky to obtain information about Inps

Technology solution

State of the art technology has been integrated at all levels of the solution. Front end has been developed with a solution that allows the use of a real human face which replicates a human voice (this makes the interaction more personal). Thanks to Lip-sync technology, every movement of the virtual assistant is coordinated with the message given. Questions received from users are gathered, and interpreted with an NLP (Natural Language Processing) tool in order to respond with the most appropriate answer possible, and then analysed in order to learn users needs. Furthermore, sources of information are distributed across different systems to which the solution has been connected. Finally, all the information gathered is used to create reports which illustrate to the institute management what is that citizens are requesting, what answers they are receiving and where are critical service and communication gaps that need to be fulfilled.

Impact

The main novelty of this project lies in the way that traditional communication schemas for public administrations are transformed. Citizens will no more have to settle in to the navigation rules of online portals and other service channels, but institutions will easily adapt to the way that citizens communicate. Users will express their needs freely and Vicky will interpret and respond to each question in a natural way. By interpreting questions and the reactions to the answers provided, the system will learn and report to the public administration what needs are still unsatisfied. The other important innovation is that public administrations are able to adopt one face in all their communications. One face and one voice that represents the institution in every situation, independently from the channel (web, mobile, TV, kiosk, ecc), the language and the need (information or services). In fact, while Vicky has certainly proven its potential with online services, the solution is already available on mobile devices and kiosks. Vicky, not only improves communication, but also facilitates traditional offline desk services as, after they use the service, people tend to reduce the time needed at the desk (for example, most people were able to prepare their forms prior to presenting it to the service desk) Plans for future evolutions of the solution are to extend the channels by which Vicky can be contacted by citizens (ie. TV) and to implement outbound communication. Vicky will be able to send information through different channels and call people, if requested, to remind of important deadlines. Compared to the situation before the launch (50% of requests at branches were for generic information, and other low added value services), evidence gathered shows that user’s perceive this channel as a transparent dialogue. Furthermore, during the ForumPA, It was proven that a kiosk placed prior to branch desks reduces requests for generic information and forms finding and filling. This results in an important improvement thanks to reduction of waiting time, reduced forms needs (filled forms are printed directly from the kiosk thus reducing the number of unutilized forms). Data collected from user dialogues is also being interpreted as it is providing useful information for other Public Administrations in Italy (ie. INPDAP)

Track record of sharing

Some of Vicky characteristics, make the solution an easy candidate for reuse and sharing across institutions. Firstly, its capability to work with different languages helps sharing of information across border, Secondly, its multi-channel capabilities, make it an easy instrument for events in which information is shared across institutions. For example, kiosks are already planned for the “Giornate Internazionali di Consultazione” in which social security institutes from different countries gather together to provide services. These will be great occasions to demonstrate the value of Vicky to institutions across Europe. A possible direct application at other European institutions (Good practice) is the information on laws, legislations and on the rights gained after the regulations on “totality”, it can also be reused for reconstruction of the working periods in different countries: the application works by fuelling the knowledge base through cooperation between European institutions During the project, Inps has also defined an organizational model and a process in order to facilitate reuse from other Italian and European administrations: the reusability process foresees as a first step the investigation, detection and comprehension of the initial state of the resources (information, processes, components SW available at the “giving” subject. The process selects the resources to be reused and does a first level of recomposition for components. The macro criteria for reusability (eg. Normative compatibility, portability, technical compatibility, level of documentation, complexity, etc)

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Usability is not enough: In our first pilot project a virtual assistant was used to “navigate” trough information (the avatar only presented standard navigation menus) therefore making the use of services more “friendly”. However, after a first navigation period driven by curiosity, users kept adopting traditional channels to request information and services. Lesson 2 - Need to respond to expectations: When the system was upgraded to a version that allowed users to write questions in their natural language, many times the system did not respond properly to the questions and therefore people felt disappointed because could not receive the information they expected and kept using the traditional services. Lesson 3 - Need to learn from citizens: However, at this point, it was possible to collect and analyse people’s dialogues with Vicky. This information has been used to understand what users real needs were and to adapt the system. At this point, people that used Vicky were able to complete their tasks. This created the possibility to have longer dialogues between users and Vicky, thus creating more possibility to improve and learn from citizens