The Challenge
The UK public sector's target to make all government services available electronically by 2006, aims to be entirely customer centric by serving customers with relevant information and transactional functions 24/7 on the platform and location of the customers'; choice. Glasgow City Council, like all government bodies, has a clear mandate to serve society as a whole, without any discrimination of ethnicity, ICT skills, education, learning challenges, physical disability or income.
With over 612,000 customers, Glasgow City Council is quickly adopting e-standards across its various services, departments and transactions and needed a way of ensuring equal access to its e-services by 'all' user groups, taking into account the diversity of consumers it serves.
GCC required DA Group to devise a solution that used their technology to make the delivery of public services and information to the citizens of Glasgow as accessible as possible. DA Group was tasked with designing a communications solution that overcame barriers of language, technophobia and geography to engage with citizens and effectively communicate the government information.
The Solution
DA Group proposed a solution using interactive kiosks to connect with the citizens of Glasgow.
Driven by DA Group's T2 design tool, the Access Glasgow:Kiosk will host an avatar that is able to verbally communicate in multiple languages (including some British Sign Language) and DA Group is involved in all prototyping, virtual character delivery, interface design and application software build.
The kiosks are available for public use, free of cost and at strategic public locations to capture the identified high user/ disenfranchised groups to benefit from the council's e-services and information. The thinking, research and output has cleverly included features to ensure access to the disabled, technophobic, ethnic and less skilled, without compromising on functions, features and aesthetics.
DA Group will also be aggregating 3rd party content onto the system from outside groups and independent bodies. This information will also be translated, spoken and consistently branded in the Access Glasgow:Kiosk style.
Results
The pilot will be rolling out in late 2003. The kiosks will ensure that Glasgow's residents will all enjoy easy access to council services and information across the city. Areas of high unemployment, residential areas, busy urban areas, sporting and leisure centre locations and public buildings and public transport terminals will all be prime locations for the kiosks ensuring that citizens are able to have access to them as much as possible.
The solution is modular in nature and DA Group will be adding new features, and functionalities based on consumer feedback, useage and Glasgow City Council's electronic ambitions. This information will be helpful for future stages so recommendations on development can be made through detailed management reporting procedures based on user interaction and requests.
Conclusion
The Access Glasgow:Kiosk will deliver information on council services, travel, jobs, entertainment and how to receive support in five languages' speech and text with variable font sizes to maximise accessibility.
DA Group's role is project management of a high profile, highly complex, pioneering multi-vendor government kiosk project. The Kiosks will feature rapid content aggregation, multi-lingual abilities and spoken delivery of other people's content (quite a compelling concept!)
|
