Virtual Citizen Assistant CASSY goes online at the opening of “Moderner Staat 2002”

The Agentscape AG and the net-Com AG from Osnabrück in collaboration with the city of Melle have developed a service for individual consulting over the Internet in the context of a project funded by the European Union. Thus the Internet user is not left alone when searching for a specific information on a website. This is now done by CASSY. The prototype was presented at the computer exhibition CeBit 2002 in Hannover and the e-government exhibition COM-P.A. 2002 in Bologna and attracted a lot of interest from the professional audience. On November 26th, 2002, on the occasion of the Berlin exhibition and congress “Moderner Staat 2002” at the booth of net-Com AG, the extension of the virtual city hall Melle has been put online by the chief officer Gottfried Müller, the head of the IT / Internet Services Uwe Strakeljahn and the project leader Dr. Stefan Covaci.

CASSY, the “Citizen Assistance and Support System”, will be reachable at www.stadt-melle.de. The goal of the city of Melle is to achieve the same quality and scope of consulting as in the office of the municipality. CASSY promotes the natural dialog with the Internet, is fast, effective and self-learning, knowledge building as well as cost-saving. The city of Melle started with the integration of the life circumstances in the context of relocation and an extensive consulting in government aid. During 2003 an integrated helpdesk for the whole spectrum of tasks of the local government will be realised and in addition a cross linking to other public authorities, like the administrative district Osnabrück, the job center or to other service industries for power supply or telecommunication will be implemented.

Via CASSY the citizen can use free text to submit a request and the virtual assistant will direct the user to the relevant information, by raising questions to collect additional data from the user and finally executing the transaction or providing and filling the necessary forms and explaining the steps to be further taken.

Agentscape AG offers CASSY as standard Web-based Self-Service tool for public authorities to enable them the delivery of their services to citizens (G2C) and to external organizations (G2B) anytime, anywhere, in an intuitive, humanised and effective manner. Based on the latest open technology standards, CASSY can be easily integrated with legacy systems and secures your investment when new systems or applications are added. For example CASSY can be seamlessly integrated with existing Content or Document Management System or with existing Customer Relations Management solutions.