Centrelink boosts self-service with voice biometrics

The system, built by former Telstra subsidiary KAZ and based on technology developed by both the Queensland University of Technology [QUT] and US voice recognition vendor Nuance, will allow Centrelink users to authenticate without needing to remember PINs and Passwords.

Customers opting into the service will have the unique signature of their voice recorded, alongside their choice of security questions.

The system then uses pattern recognition software to match any future calls against this voice print to verify the speaker's identity.  

Centrelink project manager Ross Summerfield said the system, built at a cost of $2 million, is the first Government deployment of voice biometrics in Australia.

The agency, which employs 4,500 staff across 25 call centres and takes 28 million calls a year, has been piloting the technology for close to two years for a select group of customers.

It will now contact some 60,000 more clients to recommend use of the system.

"We have undertaken this venture quite methodically," Summerfield said. "We want to make sure the right person accesses the right information - as it could be particularly damaging if they didn't."

Summerfield said business process and privacy concerns took up as much time as technology trials.

"Plenty of private sector implementations have failed to get the call flow right - the process of how you handle people through the process," he said. "Get call flow right and you are on a winner."

Centrelink and several independent auditors have tested the system extensively to ensure it meets the agency's obligations around privacy.

A full Privacy Impact Assessment was prepared, led by Professor Roger Clarke, and the process included consultations with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and advocates such as The Australian Privacy Foundation, the UNSW-run Cyberlaw Policy Centre and Electronic Frontiers Australia.

"Privacy advocates were engaged during the planning for the system, just prior to the pilot and at the end of the pilot," Summerfield said.

Centrelink chose to invest in biometric voice technology as a "significant portion" of welfare seekers have difficulty remembering PIN numbers and passwords, he said.

"Your voice, on the other hand, is a credential you are unlikely to forget."

Read on to page two for the mechanics of the system and details of the agency's other speech recognition trials.

A  voice-only system developed by QUT and the Nuance text-dependent voice recognition system were integrated by Kaz using a technique called Linear Discriminant Analysis to combine the results, Summerfield said.

The integration has a "serendipitous' side effect for Centrelink - it now has a vendor-neutral system in place in which upgrades and new systems can be slotted in with relative ease.

On a typical voice biometrics system, Summerfield said, around one per cent of customers cannot authenticate. But he said it is too early to give any statistics on how accurate Centrelink's biometrics system is.

In any case, a customer that fails to enrol  (whose voice cannot be accurately recorded and verified) will be "immediately thrown out to a human operator for assistance," Summerfield said.

Centrelink will not abandon its PIN and password authentication, as many customers are likely to still prefer it over voice biometrics, he said.

"The groups we are targeting specifically are high volume callers -those that contact us for regular, non-complex inquiries. The more of these customer inquiries that we automate, the more our customer service advisors can focus on complex interactions."

The new system is unavailable for a few short hours on weeknights to ensure its operation does not impact Centrelink's back-up window, Summerfield said.

"From a point of view of doing transactions, that isn't so safe [to run both concurrently]," he said.

More self-service options

Centrelink was allocated an additional $120 million in the latest Federal Budget to boost customer support resources in its call centres in the anticipation of increased unemployment, and a further $5.7 million for 'online service delivery' technologies.

Centrelink said it will use the $5.7 million to "enhance access to our online services by allowing more customers to use online services at the same time, and continuing to increase the reliability and speed of our online applications."

Some of the funding may be allocated to a production version of Nuance's "speakfreely" speech recognition software, which the agency is currently trialling among internal staff before considering a production roll-out.

Using the 'speak freely' self-service engine, Centrelink users are asked by the system upon dialling in to describe in their own words what services they wish to access, before being automatically distributed to the appropriate resource.

Centrelink is trialling the software by using it to handle inquiries made to the agency's IT help desk.