Increasing the Efficiency and Quality of E-mail Communication in E-government Using Language Technology

E-government includes electronic communication between citizens and governmental agencies. In the present on-going research project, we have focused on asynchronous communication that handling officers establish and maintain with citizens through the use of e-mail. In particular, we are designing and developing a language technology-based system to support communication that handling officers carry out at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). The SSIA receives about 10 000 e-mails per week from citizens. The e-mails are handled by handling officers distributed over four customer centers located in different parts of Sweden. The findings so far indicate that very frequent and simple questions can be answered by automatic means, and that text clustering can facilitate the process of semi-automatic answering of citizens’ e-mails. Furthermore, we report on the use of interaction design methods applied from the beginning of the software development in the project.