Hands, an Open Source application for public institutions wanting to offer public information services to their citizens and other users, is performing fine. The consortium developing Hands, recently completed a second round of testing. "It performs good, even when adding a information domain."
The second round of pilots with Hand (Helping Answers Decision Service) took place between January and April in the Italian city Bologna, the German city Saarbrücken, the British city Edinburgh and at the Italian company Enìa, a supplier of gas, water and electricity.
In Bologna the test took place at the city traffic department. Developers wanted to see whether the information on traffic circulation, parking permits and traffic lights presented by Hands reduced the number of telephone calls and visits to the department.
Saarbrücken tried out whether Hands could display data on topics such as population, building, labour market and traffic. Edinburgh tested its information services for school placement and helped parents with information on grants for school uniforms and books. Enìa tested how well users could finds its educational activities.
Natural language
Hands allows citizens to type in questions in their everyday language. The application will search the available databases and present related questions and answers. Should the query return empty-handed, the question is automatically emailed to a relevant government representative.
With the second test series, the developers wanted to see whether the communication system could correctly interpret questions. They also tested the search filter and display quality of Hands and probed how accurate the system forwarded unanswered enquiries.
According to the testers in Saarbrücken, almost all end-users needed help with the application. "But most of the test persons liked the system and had a positive attitude towards this innovative application."
Patrizia Marani, the Hands program manager in Bologna: "We now know how to increase acceptation of Hands. This give the developers an opportunity to improve the application package." Marani says the second round of test proved that the system performance is good, even when new information domains are added.
Tomcat
Hands is an initiative of the city administration of Bologna. It is currently being developed by Napiers university in Edinburgh and two Italians IT services companies, with the help of city administrations in Bologna, Saarbrücken and Edinburgh.
The application is based on Open Source components, such as the Open Source Java application server Apache Tomcat running on GNU/Linux. The application is meant to be able to connect with web browsers, PDAs and smart phones.
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