initial fieldwork for lwazi: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural south africa tebogo...
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Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: A telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa
Tebogo Gumede and
Madelaine Plauché
Human Language Technology CSIR
Outline
• Introduction • Project Lwazi• Application selection • Selected application
– Visited communities– Source of information – Transport– Providers– Languages
• Discussion• Challenges
Introduction
• Growing interest in deploying spoken dialog systems (SDSs)
• South Africa is the leader in Information
and Communications Technology (ICT) in Africa
• Illiteracy – Population with no schooling stood at 10.3% in
2007 (StatSA)
Introduction
• Mobile phone use is widespread
• Challenge of accessing government information – opting not to access
• Introducing project Lwazi
Project Lwazi
• Lwazi IsiZulu for Knowledge
• Three years funded by DAC
• Telephone-based information system
• In language of choice - 11 official languages
Project Lwazi
• Nationally available - Through a single number
• Toll-free
• Some key outputs– TTS in eleven languages– Quality ASR– MA and PHD– Application selection
Application selection
• Key Informant Interviews, • Focus group Discussions • Community survey • Household surveys and • Workshops
– Morphological analysis – Application selection
The selected application
• Community Development Workers (CDW)– ‘Foot solders’ between government
services and communities, especially the rural poor
– Then follow up to ensure citizens successfully receive services.
• CDWs at work– example
Communities visited
• Rural • High unemployment• Old and technically challenged • Suitability of Lwazi system • User expertise of telephony• Source of information
Sources of government information
02468
1012
CDW
Publ
icm
eetin
gs
loca
l rad
iost
atio
n in
loca
l lan
guag
e
Prin
t med
ia
Gov
ernm
ent
prin
t(in
clud
ing
Vuku
zenz
ele)
Sources of information
Num
ber o
f com
mun
ities
Mobile provider in communities visited
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Cell-C MTN Virgin Vodacom
Mobile providers
Num
ber o
f com
mun
ities
Potential uptake
• Two potential areas–Community and government (easy
flow and cheaper and by-in)• Key is localised information
–Within government officials (they were excited about L potential)
Challenges
• Diversity of end users will require investment in time and resource to gather accurate information
• Ambitious (stakeholders, 11 languages)
• Not everyone in our targeted group will be excited about Lwazi.
THANK YOU www.meraka.org.za/lwazi