IBM is deploying its voice-based web technology in India to enable illiterate people in the state of Karnataka to find jobs by talking on their mobile phones. The "Smarter Employability Platform" that the company is developing with the Karnataka Vocational Training and Skill Development Corporation (KVTSDC), a government agency, aims to take advantage of the large-scale proliferation of mobile phones among poor and rural users, many of whom are illiterate and speak only local languages.
India has a large number of people who are available for work, but either do not have the appropriate skills or do not know of the jobs that are available, Gopal Pingali, program director at IBM Research-India, said on Friday.
IBM and KVTSDC are trying to build an ecosystem consisting of job providers, job seekers, trainers, and testing and certification firms, he added.
The platform will use IBM's "Spoken Web" technology, a research project that aims to enable local communities to create and disseminate locally relevant content, and transact with e-commerce sites using the spoken word over the telephone instead of the written word.
Developed at IBM Research-India, Spoken Web mirrors the web in a telecom network where people can create and browse "VoiceSites" that have their own URL (uniform resource locator), traverse "VoiceLinks", and make transactions.
VoiceSites can be thought of as websites accessible over voice, though they are situated on a telephony network rather than the Internet, IBM said. The Spoken Web uses technologies such as VoiceXML (Voice eXtensible Markup Language) and HSTP (hyper speech transfer protocol).
The Spoken Web is a critical component of the project in Karnataka as it allows voice-based interaction, and enables employers to create VoiceSites and disclose the job opportunities available, while also allowing job seekers to make their profiles available through their own VoiceSites, Pingali said.
The focus of the project with Karnataka state is on workers in the unorganized sector, consisting of people like construction workers, plumbers, and carpenters, who are either illiterate or do not have access to the web on PCs, Pingali said. A key design objective was to ensure that users of entry-level mobile phones, without Internet connectivity, could use the technology, he added.
Educated users from the organized sector too are finding the technology useful because it offers anywhere, anytime access, Pingali said.
A recent research carried out has ascertained that more businesses are focusing heavily on security but still need to do more to ensure the pros of using mobile devices aren't outweighed by the cons. This is based on the findings by IBM which acknowledges that organisations are getting better at proactive security management but that more work is required to ensure the blurred lines between consumer and business devices don't adversely affect security efforts.
Some 90 per cent of business leaders plan to invest to beef up security management and resources, according to IBM research unveiled at its Pulse 2011 event this week in Las Vegas.
"Security has to be a forethought, not an after thought," said IBM's Scott Hebner. "And you have to empower everybody, you can't just have the chief security officer (CSO) looking after the security policy. That won't work." More than half of the IT decision makers surveyed said they plan on increasing spending on security for smartphones and other mobile devices.
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