Gumede, TPlauche, M2010-01-222010-01-222009-03Gumede, T and Plauche, M. 2009. Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa. EACL Workshop on Language Technologies for African Languages, Athens, Greece, 31 March 2009, pp 59-651-932432-25-6http://hdl.handle.net/10204/3912Proceedings of the EACL 2009 Workshop on Language Technologies for African Languages – AfLaT 2009, pages 59–65, Athens, Greece, 31 March 2009.Copyright: 2009 Association for Computational LinguisticsThis paper describes sociological fieldwork conducted in the autumn of 2008 in eleven rural communities of South Africa. The goal of the fieldwork was to evaluate the potential role of automated telephony services in improving access to important government information and services. Our interviews, focus group discussions and surveys revealed that Lwazi, a telephone-based spoken dialog system, could greatly support current South African government efforts to effectively connect citizens to available services, provided such services be toll free, in local languages, and with content relevant to each community.enAutomated telephony systemsSpoken dialog systemsLwaziRural areasInformation accessGovernment informationGovernment servicesLocal languagesLanguage technologiesAfrican languagesConference PresentationGumede, T., & Plauche, M. (2009). Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa. Association for Computational Linguistics. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/3912Gumede, T, and M Plauche. "Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa." (2009): http://hdl.handle.net/10204/3912Gumede T, Plauche M, Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa; Association for Computational Linguistics; 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/3912 .TY - Conference Presentation AU - Gumede, T AU - Plauche, M AB - This paper describes sociological fieldwork conducted in the autumn of 2008 in eleven rural communities of South Africa. The goal of the fieldwork was to evaluate the potential role of automated telephony services in improving access to important government information and services. Our interviews, focus group discussions and surveys revealed that Lwazi, a telephone-based spoken dialog system, could greatly support current South African government efforts to effectively connect citizens to available services, provided such services be toll free, in local languages, and with content relevant to each community. DA - 2009-03 DB - ResearchSpace DP - CSIR KW - Automated telephony systems KW - Spoken dialog systems KW - Lwazi KW - Rural areas KW - Information access KW - Government information KW - Government services KW - Local languages KW - Language technologies KW - African languages LK - https://researchspace.csir.co.za PY - 2009 SM - 1-932432-25-6 T1 - Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa TI - Initial fieldwork for LWAZI: a telephone-based spoken dialog system for rural South Africa UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10204/3912 ER -