As the world’s governments look for smarter, more efficient ways for their people to work, speech recognition could be the technology that solves the age-old problem of slow, manual documentation. Discover how speech-to-text is already at work for public services organizations—and why it’s so effective.
In recent years, nations worldwide have embarked on ‘e-government’ initiatives, determined to minimize paper processes, and deliver more accessible, efficient citizen services. the UK government has committed to making their infrastructures more robust and secure and their processes more efficient and accessible for users.
But digital processes are only as efficient as the people who use them; it’s not enough to replace paper with pixels and forms with fields. Getting e-government right means ensuring new digital workflows are much more intuitive than the old paper-based processes. And that means supporting staff—whether they’re processing a citizen’s tax return or writing up a family visit—with automation and AI.
One technology that’s already making a profound difference in this area is speech recognition, and specifically, speech-to-text.
Could speech-to-text be a catalyst for more efficient citizen services?
Speech-to-text technology has evolved rapidly in recent years—it’s now a fast, reliable way to reduce administrative effort while driving the creation of more accurate and detailed documentation and correspondence.
That’s because we speak three times faster than we type. In fact, people speak at an average of 130 words per minute—a pace that even the fastest professional typist would struggle to match.
For a public sector worker following a digital workflow, speech-to-text can be a huge time-saver, allowing them to dictate everything from notes and forms to lengthy reports. And that, of course, means they can spend more time serving citizens or reestablishing their work/life balance.
A social worker, for example, may spend the best part of their evenings typing up the paper notes or voice memos they’ve made during the working day. With a robust speech-to-text solution, those reports can be dictated straight onto the digital page in the moment. The information captured is fresh and comprehensive, and the social worker can finish on time—and see more of their own family.
Streamlined public services in action
Our own Dragon family of speech-to-text solutions—including the cloud-based Dragon Professional Anywhere and super-portable Dragon Anywhere Mobile—are underpinned by world-class speech recognition technology.
Our latest engine allows Dragon solutions to deliver up to 99% accuracy out of the box and the flexibility to tailor the dictionary to the user’s role. So, social workers can add protective services terminology, police officers can add law enforcement phrases, safety inspectors can add environmental health acronyms—whatever they need to make their workflows faster.
Speech recognition: one powerful tech among many
Implementing speech-to-text solutions is just one way to apply automation and AI to e-government initiatives and drive digital process efficiency.
Related technologies like conversational AI and behavioral analytics are already having a significant impact on public-facing systems—from virtual assistants that help citizens self-serve to proactive live chat solutions that intelligently identify struggling website visitors and connect them to a human agent.
It can be an overwhelming field to the uninitiated, so wherever you are on your digital transformation journey, you’ll want to take some time to identify and engage the right technology partner. But it’s well worth the effort. When public services get e-government right, the benefits run deep and wide—from lower costs to happier citizens and happier staff.
Learn more about Dragon and what else Nuance has to offer :https://www.nuance.com/en-gb/dragon.html.
Nuance will be speaking on 12th July at QEII Centre, London for the Public Sector Show 2022. Over the past 10 years the Public Sector Show has brought together commercial leaders, decision-makers and innovators from across the breadth of the public sector to showcase how different organisations are improving public service delivery, efficiency and value for money. Register your free pass today.
