The Feedback Revolution: Sunbird AI and SEMA's AI-Driven Speech Option for Citizens
In a complementary partnership that commenced in 2022, Sunbird AI and SEMA have set the wheels in motion to transform the way citizens provide feedback on their experiences at public institutions. SEMA’s mission, to offer a quick and easy way for citizens to voice their opinions, has been enhanced by Sunbird AI through the use of artificial intelligence. By collaborating with Sunbird AI, SEMA has expanded the functionality of its feedback devices, enabling citizens to provide feedback through voice. This development allows citizens to share their experiences effortlessly, making their voices heard in their language of choice. With the seamless integration of cutting-edge speech-to-text and machine translation technology, the Sunbird AI and SEMA collaboration is setting a new standard for efficient,insightful and inclusive citizen feedback.
Building on the success of their existing feedback devices, SEMA and Sunbird AI have taken citizen engagement to another level. The recent expansion of the feedback devices now allows citizens to provide feedback through voice. When individuals choose to share their experiences vocally, they have 15 seconds to express their thoughts in their language of choice. The team at Sunbird AI has designed the devices to accommodate multilingual feedback, ensuring that language barriers never hinder the citizens’ ability to express their opinions.
With a simple tap on the feedback devices, citizens can share their latest experiences at various public institutions. To facilitate the efficient processing of citizens’ feedback, all the voice feedback collected throughout the day is uploaded to a dashboard developed by the Sunbird AI team. Here comes the real magic: if feedback is shared in a local language, Sunbird AI’s translation system translates it into English, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the citizens’ experiences. The next step involves the machine learning model, which keenly listens for keywords like “good” or “bad” and assigns a percentage to each keyword. This AI analysis empowers the SEMA team to review citizen experiences with unparalleled accuracy and efficiency. Joel Muhanguzi, our Embedded Systems Engineer leading this project said “The integration of speech feedback into SEMA’s devices was an exciting challenge for our team. We had to design robust language translation models and implement accurate sentiment analysis to ensure we capture the essence of each user’s feedback. Witnessing the positive impact it has on citizens motivates us to push the boundaries of AI for social good.”
SEMA’s Technology Manager, Calvin Karegyeya shares, “ The integration of voice feedback into the SEMA device brings the advantage of enabling clients to provide elaborate feedback on their experience with the service. By utilizing voice recordings, clients can express their thoughts, opinions, and suggestions in a more detailed and personalized manner. This richer form of feedback can provide valuable insights enabling service providers to better understand their needs and expectations, address issues more effectively, and continuously improve the quality of their services based on direct client input.”
By deploying the improved feedback devices at Kiswa and Kisugu health centers, the Sunbird AI and SEMA partnership has sparked enthusiasm and excitement among both citizens and public officials. Citizens appreciate the ease of providing feedback in their preferred language, making the process more inclusive and accessible. As this remarkable journey unfolds, we can look forward to more transformative innovations from Sunbird AI and SEMA, working hand in hand to build a brighter future for citizen engagement and public service excellence.