Potential of Language Technology to Support Public Organizations and Their Communication Channels in a Developing Country

Abstract

Language technology can improve the efficiency and quality of the services provided by public organizations, first of all, the communication with citizens. So far, this has been investigated in the context of Western countries. We do not know, however, how beneficial such application of language technology could be for the so called developing countries. In order to find this out, we explored the communication between ten public organizations and the citizens in Rwanda. We discovered about 20 communication channels; 12 of them could benefit from various applications of language technology. Furthermore, we explored the potential of language technology for analysis of digital communication in order to better understand the citizens' needs and opinions and, hereby, increase the level of e-participation, participatory decision and policy making.