UK Government Agencies Adopt Speech Technologies
HM Land Registry lawyers and 95 judges within the Immigrations Appellate Authority (IAA) have adopted customized desktop speech recognition solutions developed by speech and digital dictation solution provider, SRC (The Speech Recognition Company), to help improve operational efficiency.
The SRC solution, powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred Version 5, will allow Land Registry lawyers to create documents, such as letters, case notes, and e-mails by dictating directly into their PCs via a microphone headset. The Land Registry has also become a SRC client to benefit from a bespoke SRC 'Train-the-Trainer' course, which enables selected staff to train other lawyers from within the Land Registry.
"As an Executive Agency, the Land Registry is bound to provide the best value for money in the execution of our statutory duties. The Land Registry employs over 150 lawyers throughout the organisation and the advent of speech recognition technology means we have been able to give them additional tools to help them deal with their tasks. This, in turn, allows us to promote and re-train support staff onto more productive work," HM Land Registry's project manager for speech recognition, Terry Hewins, said. "The Agency is confident the solution provided by SRC will help speed the production of all correspondence between our lawyers and our customers. This will, in turn, enable applications for registration to be completed more quickly, benefiting our customers."
"The SRC consultancy team visited HM Land Registry and, after just one day, managers at the Registry realised the benefits which the SRC solution could deliver. They subsequently planned a rollout project to bring speech recognition to the desktops of the lawyers within the organisation," SRC managing director desktop solutions, Colin Howman, said. "Speech recognition training programmes demand a close, one-on-one approach. While this achieves excellent results, and ensures users quickly become more productive, it means that training 100 or more individuals can be time consuming. "To solve this challenge , SRC has provided in depth 'Train the Trainer' training. This has enabled a small group of trainers from the Land Registry to equip their lawyers with the necessary skills to use the software effectively from day one.
"SRC's Train-the-Trainer courses are delivered by SRC's specialist project consultants and include a complete range of courseware, including soft and hard copies of manuals and tip sheets. These materials have been developed from experience of numerous training courses that SRC has already delivered to other government and professional services organisations." "By taking this innovative approach to document production the IAA is embracing new technologies and the benefits they can bring," Howman said. "A dedicated vocabulary to match the needs of the judiciary is absolutely vital to achieve maximum usability and accuracy, and ensures there are no lengthy 'learning' sessions for new users . Instead, once the installation and training is completed, the judiciary will be able to use the system effectively immediately, so appeal hearing documents, notes and letters can be created with ease."