AI Universal Translator for Inclusive Government

Our Approach

Key Features

• Citizenship queries: Responds to inquiries using data exclusively from citizenship websites.
• Text-to-speech: Converts written content into speech for those who prefer or require auditory formats.
• Summarisation: Provides concise summaries of complex information.
• Simplified language: Adjusts reading levels to ensure content is accessible to all literacy levels.
• Language translation: Translates content into the user's preferred language.
• Government staff query (review): Reviews documents for plain language compliance.
• Government staff query (translation): Translates official documents into plain, easily understandable language.
• Autonomous verification: Uses autonomous agents to verify the accuracy of generated responses.
• Transparency dashboard: Offers both citizens and government agencies a clear view of AI performance, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Key Usecases

• Non-English Speaker Engaging with Local Council: A resident who does not speak English can confidently communicate with their local council in their native language. They can ask questions, raise concerns, and receive accurate responses in real time, without needing a translator, ensuring privacy and direct communication.
• Simplifying Complex Government Forms: Faced with lengthy, complicated government forms, a citizen uses the system to automatically simplify the documentation into plain, readable language. Key terms and sections are explained in an easy-to-understand manner, helping them navigate the process with confidence.
• Accessibility for Low Literacy Levels: An individual with a low reading level uses the tool to automatically simplify a government document. The system breaks down complex language into simpler terms, making it easier for them to understand and engage with essential information.
• Time-Poor Citizen Receiving Summaries: A busy citizen can quickly receive a summary of important government information or reports. Instead of sifting through detailed documents, the system provides them with concise, clear summaries of the key points, saving them time while keeping them informed.
• Reporting Issues in Plain Language: A citizen who wants to report a pothole or other issue can easily do so using the tool, which allows them to describe the problem in plain English. The system captures their input and formats it appropriately for submission to the relevant government department, avoiding the need for complex forms.
• Government Employee Ensuring Document Compliance: A government employee uses the system to review a document they have ve written, ensuring it aligns with the latest guidelines from the Australian Style Manual. The tool checks for adherence to style, tone, punctuation, and inclusive language, offering suggestions for improvement before final submission.
• Data Source Verification: The system reviews incoming information from various sources (social media, public platforms, news outlets, etc.) and cross-references it with authoritative and trusted databases to check for accuracy and reliability.
• Disinformation Detection: Using AI techniques such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the system automatically checks whether the information aligns with known, verified facts. If discrepancies are detected, the system flags potential disinformation and provides a summary of conflicting information.
• Increasing Volunteering Through AI-Driven Awareness: Volunteering rates are declining partly because people are unaware of local needs or find it difficult to understand how they can help. This use case focuses on making volunteer opportunities easier to understand and engage with.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Advanced AI Techniques

We achieve these goals using some state-of-the-art AI technologies, including:

• Multi-modal Large Language Models: Handle text and speech, making services accessible to all, including those with disabilities.
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Ensures that information is accurate and sourced from authoritative references.
• Agentic AI Models: Validate query results before presenting them to users, ensuring responsible and accurate responses.
• Governance Dashboards: Aligned with the latest AI principles and accessibility frameworks, especially focused on providing transparency and accountability in service to all citizens, including those with disabilities.

Technology Stack

Our prototype is built with scalability, flexibility, and accessibility in mind:

• Python for backend processing.
• Vue.js, Vuetify, Vite for front end development
• Langchain and LangServ for managing language models and agent-based workflows.
• Large Language Models(LLM) for natural language understanding and generation.
• Agentic autonomous agents for validating outputs and ensuring ethical standards.
• Text-to-Speech for accessibility, offering auditory assistance to those who need it.
• Vector database Index and store embeddings from data ingestion pipelines

All components are deployed in Docker containers, using Docker Compose in a component based architecture. LLM API's are invokable within microservices using LangServ to ensure easy scalability and modularity across different environments.

Team Datasets

• Style Manual for Australian Government: Data ingestion pipeline parses the style manual unstructured data on this site, creates embeddings and stores these in a vector database for later sematic search. This helps ensure that text provided is semantically aligned to the style guide. Data Set
• Social Cohesion - Dept of Home Affairs: Data ingestion pipeline parses the data on this site, creates embeddings and stores these in a vector database for later sematic search. This helps ensure that questions on citizenship are being answered based on qualified official sources to minimise hallucinations. Data Set

Data Story