CASSY – Citizen Assistance and Support System

Innovative eGovernment of the next generation

Socially -Intelligent services

Effective solutions for Communes, Cities and Districts

Increased customer satisfaction via user-centeredness and personalised self-service.

Better, faster and more efficient service offers and service delivery.

eGovernment Solutions

CASSY is a web self-service tool for publicauthorities to deliver all the services theyoffer to citizens and external organisations,anytime, anywhere, in an intuitive andeffective manner. CASSY allows the authorities to conduct apersonal, humanized conversation with theuser. Instead of requiring bureaucraticjargon and a knowledge of the opaqueinternal structure of public authorities,CASSY enables citizens and companies toconduct their business in a simple naturallanguage related to the task at hand. The services offered by CASSY areorganised around life-circumstance themeslike marriage, children, relocation, job(covering topics like employment,education, taxes etc.), formation of acompany (covering topics likeincorporation, funding, patents etc.),market entry and internationalisation(covering topics like legal position, locationfactors, taxes etc.). Based on the latest open technologystandards, CASSY can be easily integratedwith legacy systems and secures yourinvestment when new systems orapplications are added. For exampleCASSY can be seamlessly integrated withyour Content or Document ManagementSystem or with your existing CustomerRelations Manage-ment solution.

CASSY is a true eCare product that lets users of a website achieve their goals quickly and by themselves.Interacting with CASSY is both enjoyable and efficient.This induces the user to stay longer on the site and toexplore its features as well as to return more often. To the public authority CASSY means saving resources,enhancing productivity, cutting costs, an improvedknowledge about the users and therefore a better serviceproposition. CASSY is self-learning and dynamicallyadapts itself to the changing user demands andbehaviour. Via its socially-intelligent and intuitiveinterfaces CASSY allows you to offer your users a betterexperience on your site. Even more, CASSY turns out tobe a true representative of your agency, that deliversqualified consulting services around the clock.

CASSY is eGovernment of the next generation

Comfortable, anytime, from anywhere

Human touch and personalised

Fast, Effective and self-learning

Knowledge building

Cost reduction

CASSY – Citizen Assistance and Support System

CASSY

Improved Service First of all CASSY is a reliable consultant that offers usersrelevant information and solutions according to their individualcircumstances. That is not all. On behalf of the user and takinginto account security standards such as those associated withelectronic signatures, CASSY even manages to performcomplex transactions that include regional and national publicservices, as well as those from the private sector. CASSY is thekey for the delegated Supply Chain Management of networkedagency services. For example in case of a relocation CASSY will inform thecitizens about all the necessary steps via a natural languagedialog, tailored to their specific circumstances. Like aprofessional consultant, CASSY will provide the solution in theshortest time. With the authorisation of the citizen (e.g. via achip-card and an electronic signature) CASSY can perform therelocation registration not just with public authorities but it canalso take over the registration with the telecommunicationcompany, the electricity and water suppliers, the garbagecollection service, and the newspaper boy. This represents aconvenient, timesaving service for the citizen. „ Data should move, not the citizens “, so Otto Schily,Federal Minister of the Interior, at the opening ceremonyof the CeBIT 2002 in Hannover.

CASSY(1) is not just an eGovernment virtual - employee thatreacts quickly and competently to questions and requests forservice but it can, if requested, also pro-actively deliverrelevant information to the user, in a timely fashion and over avariety of communication channels. CASSY can even performtasks autonomously on behalf of the user, always choosing thesolution that best suits his user.

Service

(1) Parts of CASSY were integrated and evaluated in a real on-lineeGovernment project supported in the Fifth Framework programme bythe European Commission in the IST initiative and included in thecluster of projects EUTIST-AMI (www.eutist-ami.org) regarding Agentsand Middleware Technologies applied in real industrial environments.

Focussing on the citizen „The needs of the citizens are unknown to most city halls“, so Wilhem Alms, CEO of the consulting company Mummert und Partner. The key to an efficient and effective eGovernmentsolution is a citizen-focused service model that treatseach citizen individually, tailoring the communication andservice offer according to their individual needs andexpectations. With each interaction CASSY learns more details about acitizen or a company. Using anonymous or personalisedcommunication sessions, CASSY is in the position tocontinuously and consistently record and evaluateproblems, needs, requirements, opinions, preferencesand patterns of behaviour of its users. This is used todevelop a more precise understanding of the user and toidentify content gaps in order to improve the interactiondialog and to optimise the service offers dynamically.This approach guarantees that users will reach their goalsfaster and have a better experience, and that agencieswill reach their economic and political goals moreefficiently.

Personalised Self-Service CASSY puts the users in a position tosolve their problems on their own, fastand easily. Interactions with CASSYspan from an initial search for relevantfactual information using naturallanguage queries, over interactiveQuestion & Answer support accordingto a selected theme or topic, to thecomplete tailored solution (proceduralinformation) to a particular problem. The deep knowledge of the usersenables the authority to build apersonalised service offer that satisfiesthe individual users and invites them touse the medium more often. The user ismotivated to intensify communicationwith the public authority which, in turn,allows the authority to permanentlyimprove the information andsatisfaction of its customers and alsoeducate them concerning policy andregulatory changes. CASSY observes how the users dealwith the offered information, forms, andprocesses and also collects explicitfeedback information. It processesthese data to locate bottlenecks. Thisapproach allows the administration toimprove their service offers. CASSY can give your users morecontrol over the transactions ofadministrative acts and thus improvethe transparency of your authority. As amatter of course CASSY automaticallyinforms the user when a problem orrequest is solved. Using CASSY,customers can get timely informationvia personalised emails or newslettersaccording to their needs and interests. „Online-services in governmentagencies will soon be the rule andnot the exception,“ promises OttoSchily, Federal Minister of theInterior during the presentation ofthe eGovernment initiative‚BundOnline 2005’ in December2001 in Berlin.

Service

Our strategy - via a user-centeredapproach and personalised self-service, CASSY delivers increasedcustomer satisfaction, a higher degreeof automation and better decisionsupport for governmental agentsthrough access to consistent userrecords. Thus better, faster and moreefficient service offers and servicedelivery.

The technology uses a flexible, scalable and highly availableinfrastructure that allows for easy integration of existing andfuture systems, applications and data sources. Openness andprotection of investment is guaranteed by standardconformance (J2EE, SOAP, XML, …). This includes support forvarious interfaces like, Web, Wap, and SMS to the user andWebServices, JDBC, and Java Connectors for the integrationwith other services, applications and legacy systems. CASSYis compliant with SAGA (Standards and Architectures foreGovernment Applications) – the standards conformance recommendation of the German eGovernment initiative “BundOnline 2005” (www.bund.de/BundOnline-2005/SAGA).CASSY is based on Agentscape’s basic platform CyMON(Create your Match and Organising Netware), a development-and runtime-environment for socially-intelligent agentapplications.

The architecture comprises three tiers with the followingcomponents: Web-, WebServices-Interfaces, NaturalLanguage Understanding (NLU) Engine, PersonalisationEngine, Interaction Engine, Learning Engine, Knowledge Base,External Services, Persistency Service, Connectors for theintegration with legacy systems – see figure.

The administration is supported by graphical tools. Theseinclude life-cycle management (simple installation with anassistant, automatic upgrades), management tools for theconfiguration and monitoring, and authoring tools for thecreation and maintenance of content and interactionscenarios. Multiplatform: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, UnixWare,Windows, etc. System requirements: Java compatible platform; installableon a single server, linearly scalable to higher load, faulttolerance via redundancy; also integration in already installedJ2EE conformant servers like BEA Weblogic, IBM Websphereor Oracle. Professional services – Agentscape AG supports you in theintroduction of the eGovernment solution in your environmentcovering consultancy and strategic planning, the design, theimplementation and testing, as well as the rollout and trainingof your staff. Projects are carried out according to the “state ofthe art” methodology Rational Unified Process (RUP) using theUnified Modelling Language (UML) and tools of the RationalSuite to assure the timely delivery and quality of the productwithin budget and the overall success of the project.

Technology

Partner: CASSY is compatible with thecontent management systems of leadingmanufacturers, like active-City andREGIOCity by Net-Com AG and iRACERby Herrlich & Ramuschkat GmbH in orderto offer the authorities the besteGovernment system. The integration ofCASSY with one of these contentmanagement systems results in theoptimal technical infrastructure for offeringan improved citizen portal integrating theleading customer management solutionand the eGovernment expertise of citiesand regions.

Software

Each interaction scenario is part of the hierarchicalstructured scenario tree (the taxonomy). It can beselected and changed. After the import from the contentmanagement system the content of your website canimmediately be embedded in the interaction-scenarios.

The agent can give answer to the users questions but alsoraise questions and collect data in order to direct the userto the right place on your website.

The Application As an extension to your contentmanagement system, CASSY offersan Interaction Scenario ManagementTool. You can use it to create andapply changes to the existing dialogsand interaction sequences of yourCASSY- agent. The tool provides the followingfeatures: �� Extensibility of the scenarios �� Import of content from the

content management system, sothat the consulting functionality isautomatically adjusted to thecontent of your website

�� Predefined library of dialogs, so

that you can start your interactivewebsite right out-of-the-box.

�� Integrated testing tool, so that the

changes and extensions can bechecked immediately

�� Intuitive, easy to use graphical

user interface, even forinexperienced users

The Administration The administration is as comfortableas in your Windows environment. �� Automatic installation with the

installation assistant �� Configuration and monitoring of

the servers via an integrated webinterface

Step 1: Scenario Structure (Taxonomy)

Step 2: Scenario Editing

Scenario Due to Cassy the citizencan use free text tosubmit a request and …

... the agent will directthe user to therelevant information,by ...

... raising questions tocollect additional datafrom the user ...

... and finally executingthe transaction orproviding and filling thenecessary forms andexplaining the steps tobe further taken.

The forms pool contains all important forms requiredfor the changing life-circumstances.

Hello! My name is Cassy. I amglad to meet you on behalf of theCity of Melle.

“The City of Melle has selectedCASSY as one of the first cities inGermany not just because of thegood usability and the shortproject duration. CASSYconvinces mainly by the facility tointeract with the agent and theresulting excellent service. Theusage of the system is simple,saves time and money and is funfor the user. Using CASSY it ispossible to give the citizen thesame individual consulting andservice over the Internet as at thecounter in the public authoritypremises. Thus CASSY providesa new dimension in thedevelopment of services andservice tools.” Uwe Strakeljahn Director IT and Internet Services City of Melle Germany

Bülowstraße 66 D-10783 Berlin Germany

Tel: +49-(30) - 59 00 478 –0 Fax: +49-(30) - 59 00 478 –99 email: info@agentscape.de Web: http://www.agentscape.de

Agentscape AG

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eGovernment Solutions

� 2002 Agentscape AG. All rights reserved. CyMON and Cyb are trademarks of Agentscape AG. All other names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Agentscape AG is a provider of basic technology fordynamic personalisation and social-oriented intelligentbusiness Agents and systems, applications and servicesbased on this technology. The company’s vision is a Multi-Agent system wherepersonal agents (Cybs) and provider agents (CyMON)communicate, negotiate and execute transactions in anautonomous manner, on behalf of and in the interests oftheir owners.

Agentscape sees its core competence in the

�� proprietary real-time natural language technology -

morpho-syntactic and semantic disambiguation as

well as in the semantic annotation of unstructured

information by means of proprietary

categorization/indexing technology, and

�� domain of Knowledge Management Agents based

on neural and semantic network technology and

advanced AI matching algorithms, as well as in

ontology-based SemanticWeb