[LINK] Services Aust Brainwave: Let's Use OCR

[Roger Clarke]

[ My memory must be faulty.

[ I thought OCR'ing of incoming documents, and presentation of image
alongside best-machine-guess text, was mainstream about 25 years ago.

[ Can it really be true that no-one told any of the many agencies that
have been handling hard-copy forms about the technology?

[ There's generally pretty adequate payback just in getting something
editable onto case-managers' screens.

[ And, given a 5-20% error-rate, it's essential that it be at least
eyeballed before any form of genuinely algorithmic, rule-based or
purely-empirical/statistical-guess AI/ML/NN is let loose on it. ]


Services Australia trials OCR on Centrelink claims
Capgemini solution accelerates document processing.
Justin Hendry
itNews
Oct 16 2020
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/services-australia-trials-ocr-on-centrelink-claims-554709

Services Australia is trialling an optical character recognition (OCR)
solution to greatly reduce the amount of time it takes Centrelink
paperwork to reach caseworkers for assessment.

First introduced at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the
Capgemini-built solution has been pivotal to accelerate claims
processing during a period of increased demand for welfare support.

It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically
check whether information contained in forms lodged by welfare
applicants and recipients is accurate and complete.

Some 25,000 documents currently pass through the agency’s document
lodgement service each day, meaning it can be days - if not weeks -
before caseworkers can assess claims.

...


-- 
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University