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2.2. FACTORS MOTIVATING EXPERT SYSTEM DEVELOPMENTThe factors motivating the development and use of expert systems by governmental entities are similar to the reasons businesses engage in expert systems development. Governmental entities, however, must take into consideration the unique characteristics and challenges associated with public institutions. Specifically, conditions that motivate the use of expert systems in government include pressure to shrink the size of government and increase productivity, the role of government as an information provider, the complexity of regulation, the volume of information that must be processed, the scarcity of experts, and citizen dissatisfaction. Shrinking government. A number of factors contribute to the attrition of experienced staff in both the private and public sectors. Expert systems encode and store the knowledge and experience of an expert within a software program. Facts, relationships, and judgmental knowledge of human experts are incorporated into the expert system. Thus, the expert system application is an invaluable resource that makes an organization less vulnerable to staff attrition by encapsulating knowledge into a tangible system that can be owned, retained, and improved by an entity. Quest for productivity. Expert systems can be used to increase the productivity and effectiveness of experienced as well as novice personnel. Merced County, California, uses an expert system designed to make the provision of social services more efficient and effective (Kidd and Carlson, 1992). Because welfare and social services often get bogged down in the mass of rules and regulations, a similar system is being developed for the State of Pennsylvania Welfare Department. Tulare Country, California, uses a similar expert system to manage the 6000 frequently changing rules that govern welfare and social service payments. Previously, employees were unable to apply all the rules correctly; the expert system has reduced the error rate from 38% to virtually zero (Betts, 1993). Nature of regulation. Expert systems applications are well suited to iterative tasks that require frequent interpretation of standard sets of rules or procedures, as is often the case with governmental regulations. High task frequency and a continuing task need are indicators of sufficient demand to motivate expert system development. Taxation and social services, for example, involve iterative tasks that use rules and procedures and must be done in volume. Expert systems can assist in handling the high volume of such tasks and improving the consistency of performance. Volume of information. The implementation of expert systems can aid in handling problems requiring the filtering, interpretation, and cross-referencing of large volumes of information that are common to governmental applications. The U.S. federal tax code and regulations alone are comprised of over 7 million words of complex and incomprehensible legalese. In addition, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service sends about 15 million letters to taxpayers each year. The IRS now uses an expert system to generate these letters. Providing information services. Government workers spend a great deal of time engaged in information-related tasks, suggesting that one of the roles of government is as an information service provider. Expert systems, making use of the knowledge of some of the best organizational experts, are particularly well suited for information service operations and governmental organizations for a number of reasons. First, expert system applications have quicker response times than their human counterparts. Second, the systems can be designed to provide highly interactive and user-friendly information for ease in understanding and interpreting information. Finally, artificial intelligence implementations provide organizations with round-the-clock expert service for both consumers and government officials. Scarcity of experts. The demand for expert systems is related to the lack of accessibility to experts on a dependable and consistent basis. In government, this problem is aggravated by the phenomenon that the most expert and experienced employees may be lured away from government to potentially more lucrative jobs in the private sector. In addition, some areas of government service are so unique that alternate sources of expertise may not even exist. For example, government activities such as tax compliance, welfare and social services, and law enforcement have no real equivalents in the business world. Citizen dissatisfaction. The 1994 American Consumer Satisfaction Index survey revealed that Americans rate the public sector (including trash collection, police, and the Internal Revenue Service) lowest overall for quality of goods and service used by Americans. Dissatisfaction with government services is almost universal. Unlike the private sector, in which the payer and the consumer are generally assumed to be the same, governmental consumers can be divided into two types, which are not mutually exclusive. Those receiving the benefit of the services (citizens) and those paying for the services (taxpayers) are unique kinds of customers -- most of whom are also voters. In the private sector, organizations face the discipline of the competitive free market. Governments, however, usually hold monopoly positions. Dissatisfaction with a business product or service is shown by either complaints or by consumers not purchasing the product or services again. Of course, choosing not to purchase a governmental service is not generally an option -- taxes, municipal services, and police protection, for example. In most countries and localities, governmental consumers show their dissatisfaction for governmental service through complaints, and more important, at the ballot box. Voters demand improved governmental services. Expert systems may be at least a partial solution.
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