Reprinted from the first edition of Westchester County's, N.Y., new Leading Technology newsletter.

The long-awaited revolution in speech-based technology is arriving, bringing new services into everyday life.

With crude oil prices rising to record high levels in recent months and growing concerns of volatile gas prices, there is renewed relevance in our voice-recognition service designed to inform residents of the lowest gas and heating oil prices.

Callers dialing 914-995-8710 are given dollar-saving data about the cheapest prices in their area, information previously available only online, at www.westchestergov.com/consumer.

Acknowledging the need to ascertain gas prices and station locations on the road instead of on the computer, Norman Jacknis, CIO for Westchester County, says, "It's expanding the definition of e-government. E-government goes beyond web-based services -- it's technology serving people even when they're away from their computers."

Since gas and heating oil prices fluctuate frequently and vary by as much as 20 percent within only a few blocks, interest
in finding the lowest price fuel has risen dramatically. Use of the telephone service more than qualrulpled last spring after gas prices soared.

Richard Levy, Assistant CIO for Physical Facilities, attributes the service's success to its straightforward, no-nonsense approach: "We spent a lot of time fine tuning this service, studying the way people would interact with it. We made a sincere effort to make it work the way users would expect."

This technology has been shown to work best when built to quickly deliver a specific piece of information.

"Ours is a predictable and consistent dialogue between the person seeking information and the system that provides it," says Levy.

The low number of hang-ups recorded to date signals this approach is working.

Prior to the line's launching in October 2003, the VoiceGenie engine fueling this technology had to be trained to recognize local pronunciations. For example, the street name "Mamaroneck" was defined to match its colloquial, everyday pronunciation, not according to normal English pronunciation rules.

Voice recognition technology will continue to be refined and expanded -- more locational information based on GIS data will gradually be made available over the phone. As for the Westchester County Information Line, later this year, users will be able to refine their search by speaking their street names. KW