July 6, 2023
By Sarah Rae
Swindon City Council, UK, implemented a machine learning solution to reduce content translation costs from £160 (US$203) per document to just 7p and cut turnaround times from weeks to minutes.
The code for this system has been released as open source for the benefit of other local governments.
The initiative was born out of a request from the City Council’s Pediatric Treatment Services. Swindon has a population of she 230,000 and about 100 languages are spoken throughout the Borough. In 2021, the Pediatric Treatment Service had around 400 documents translated, each costing an average of £160 and taking up to 16 days. This includes in-house preparation and sending files to external translation agencies.
Swindon’s Emerging Technologies team included local bilingual speakers in the selection process and conducted a market evaluation of solutions that would make translating content faster and cheaper. We ended up choosing Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“[AWS] had some technology, but this was a good use case they hadn’t considered,” said Chief Digital Officer Philip Mirkin.
The team worked with AWS to develop a machine learning tool that meets Congress’ requirements based on the Amazon Translate neural machine translation service. Together they reduced the process to his 3 clicks and designed the user interface. The system needed to be fast, easy to use, resilient, and secure to protect children’s information.
With no upfront costs other than staff time in Swindon, the council reports that the tool has reduced translation spending in pediatric care services from £64,000 to £27 per year. Documents are available in 14 minutes on average.
The document translation tool is now being used by other branches of Congress, Merkin said. today’s city.
Now, a year after its introduction, the solution not only saves time and money, but also meets accuracy requirements, and the city council says it has not been asked clarification questions about translations.
Sharing innovation
Other parliaments can now also benefit from Swindon’s efforts.
“We are very passionate about open source and sharing solutions across the public sector,” said Merkin.
In its contract with AWS, the council stipulated that instead of co-developing the product, it would provide it to other customers “for a fee.” It is available as open source via GitHub and AWS Industry Solutions and can be translated on a pay-as-you-go basis.
AWS says the solution is being deployed in other parliaments in the UK, including Edinburgh, and in countries such as France and Spain.
“When Swindon showed us what they had built, it quickly became clear that this was a game-changer for an organization like Swindon. It’s also been a big change for local governments, parliaments and municipalities in China,” said Wayne Sutter of Principal Industry Solutions. Manager of AWS.
“We helped make the solution more generic and also incorporate security and user management.”
emerging technology
The Swindon Emerging Technologies team was formed in 2019 to identify opportunities to benefit multiple parliamentary services and test technologies. The team will also explore how similar machine learning solutions can be used to meet readability requirements in adult care.
Other projects include using drones to inspect roofs, deploying AI to detect potholes and falling flies, and introducing robotic process automation to the process of free school lunches. increase.
“There are a lot of innovation opportunities out there and a lot of use cases,” says Mirkin. “I think if we partner with the right organizations and talk to local governments, we can do a lot together to bring real benefits to our customers. We will all be better off.”
