Mehdi Raoufi, Institutionen för Informationsteknologi och medier, Mittuniversitetet: Making e-government services everyday - Preventing digital exclusion by means of digital assistants

Under detta "förseminarium" diskuterar en panel Mehdi Raoufis kommande avhandling. Seminariet inleds av Mehdi med en kort presentation av avhandlingen (ca 10 min). För dem som vill läsa avhandlingen inför seminariet finns exemplar tillgängliga via Mehdi (mehdi.raoufi@miun.se).

By growing the popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web, and in line with the government’s initiatives regarding the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for providing citizens with information and services, many agencies in the public sector found both economical and commercial benefits in the use of these technologies. But as founded, ICT appears to be both a unifying and a divisive force. In other words, despite the ICT’s offered advantages, there are people who lack access to the digitally provided services and information or do not use them effectively. This issue is often addressed in term of ‘digital divide’, the result of which is the exclusion of some citizens of the digital society.

In connection to digital exclusion (and as a result of the verity of its causes) this thesis is focused on the delivery of e-government services to citizens with a particular emphasis on enabling access to those who are at risk of exclusion of the digital society, such as elderly people and those from minority ethnic groups like immigrants. In that direction, one of the frequently addressed issues concerning the accessibility of digitally provided services and information on the Internet is found to be the users’ unawareness about the location where the desired service/information is stored.

Thereby, the overall objective of the thesis is to devise, realize and assess a solution which provides citizens with a simple and effective way to access and utilize the offered services and information on public websites. To gain this objective, the thesis argues for a digital assistant solution; i.e. a conversational agent that is able to provide the user with the desired service or information by means of dialog. Such solution was expected to act as a human agent who possesses knowledge regarding the existent information and services, their application area, and the place where these are stored. Thereby, the intention was to resolve user queries in a mixed initiative dialog by sharing applicable information of the system and leading the dialog to retrieve the desired information or services.

The conducted studies found that a digital assistant possesses a great potential for coping with difficulties connected to navigation and utilization of e-government services, while due to some difficulties connected to both the employed technologies, the designed user interface and the system’s required maintenance, this solution could fall short to live up to the intended expectations.

Välkomna!
Daniel Skog