ACTIVITIES :: eTen :: Projects :: Projects of the Month :: MAP
November 2005 Project of the Month: MAP
Mobile Adaptive Procedure
Issues being addressed
Project MAP helps public information offices and emergency services to
increase the quality of life and the security of citizens.
MAP is an idea started in 2002 with the launch of an IST research project
belonging to the Fifth Framework Programme. The concept was to analyse and
improve the interaction between citizens and any level of front-office in
Public Administrations.
The research project ended in May 2004. It released a pre-industrial system
to support e-assistance for workers engaged in answer citizens’ requests in
the so-called “Citizen Relationship Office” contest to improve working
conditions and enhance the effectiveness of public offices. The project also
received an award as one of the best hundred e-government projects during
the most important Public Administration exhibition in Italy.
Experimental sites were launched in France and Italy. The platforms were
tested in different environments dealing with diverse services in: Lazio
Region, L’Aquila Prefecture and City of Livorno in Italy; Municipality of
Périgueux and Boulazac in France.
Nowadays, with a different and extended partnership, MAP is validating the
platform from a commercial perspective to better understand “where” and
“when” it should be used and how the market will respond under different
usages. The two main testing environments are: information offices for
citizens along with a very new one, emergency management.
This last environment is the main innovation implemented in the new
experimentation drawn by the eTEN framework. In fact, at the project
commencement the Italian Ministry of Interiors launched the initiative to
implement MAP in a new challenging operative environment as emergency
management presents.
The involvement of Public Administration as the main stakeholder in the
e-government process is considered a priority for the market validation
phase. MAP involves both central and local Administrations directly dealing
with actors committed to the field with a clear objective: to improve the
quality of the interaction between citizen and government activities.
The developed technical platform is mature and effective. Therefore, MAP
does not need a further development but rather extensive piloting to adapt
it to market needs and different situations in Europe.
The core goal is to perform a pilot to consolidate developed technologies
and to address interoperability and multi-language issues depending on local
needs.
Objectives of the project
The goal of MAP is to provide answers and suggestions to question coming from
the interaction between citizens and public clerks. This happens thanks to a
vocal interface able to convert the speech into text and perform a natural
language semantic analysis of the pronounced sentences. This feature activates a
number of agents crawling and browsing all the knowledge sources structured into
databases or unstructured or coming from past experiences and validated from
expert of the services in which MAP operates.
Another relevant MAP feature is its mobile architecture on a virtual private
network providing the high security and privacy guarantees needed for democracy
services. In fact, it uses GPRS/UMTS cellular channels to make available all its
functionalities on a simple PDA.
In term of flexibility, MAP adopts open source technologies fully interoperable
with all the major solutions in the field of knowledge management and semantic
analysis.
Achievements
A relevant project milestone was on May 2005 when all the pilots started to use the platform. Specifically, the pilot projects are:
- Ministry of Interior – Fire Brigade Department - Padua Headquarter (in Italy);
- Livorno Municipality – Citizen Relationship Office (in Italy);
- Sokolow Podlaski Municipality - Centre of Economic Information (in Poland);
- Szigetszentmiklós Municipality - Welfare Office (in Hungary);
- Luleå Municipality - Citizen Relationship Office (in Sweden).
The involved organisations have not changed their current operating
procedures in order to minimise the impact on the working style and to allow the
correct use of MAP. The functionality of MAP has simply been added to the
existing knowledge while not modifying any legacy systems on which it is linked
with.
A massive information and training campaign has been organized targeting the
people involved in the experimentation. In term of communication different media
are in place to inform and create awareness among the users. A promotional DVD
explaining MAP features and showing real cases within the pilots is in progress.
Reference Data
http://www.map-project.net/
Contract Type: Market Validation
Start Date: 03-01-2005
End Date: 30-06-2006
Duration: 18 months
