Project Description (in Slovene)
Project Description (in English)
Project Team
The (Un)Employment Problem Analyses
Current System
Plans, Modifications
Research Techniques
Deliverables/Tasks
1997 Annual Report
1998 Annual Report
System Design Documentation
Related Links
Uspeh projekta bo merjen po tem, ali bo sistem dejansko deloval, ali bo implementiran in v redni rabi, glede na stevilo uporabnikov, glede na stevilo funkcij in kolicino podatkov. Pomembno bo tudi mnenje Republiskega zavoda za zaposlovanje.
V Sloveniji je trenutno okoli 125.000 nezaposlenih, nezaposlenost pa predstavlja glede na ankete najpomembnejsi nacionalni problem. V preteklih letih so Zavod Republike Slovenije za zaposlovanje, Ministrstvo za znanost in tehnologijo in Institut Jozef Stefan s skupnim projektom implementirali prvo verzijo informacijskega sistema za zaposlovanje v slovenscini. Sistem je ze sedaj med zelo pogosto obiskanimi, potrebno pa ga bo modernizirati in dopolniti z novimi funkcijami.
The project success will be evaluated according to the actual every-days use of the system that we propose to implement. The evaluation will also take into account the number of Internet users, number of supported functions and the amount of collected data. The important evaluation criteria will be the evaluation provided by the Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia.
There are currently around 125,000 unemployed people in Slovenia, comprising 6.25% of the whole population. According to public polls investigation unemployment is regarded as one of the most important national problems in Slovenia. The first version of the employment system supports Slovenian language only and was implemented in a joint projects of the Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia, Slovenian ministry for science and technology and the J. Stefan Institute. The current system is already commonly used but needs improvements and upgrades.
M. Gams (head)
A. Karalic
M. Drobnic
V. Krizman
M. Grobelnik
Other groups: P. Golob
Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia:
J. Glazer (director), A. Zizmond (coordinator),
S. Pirher, T. Furlan and others.
Ministry of Science and Technology
and Ministry of Labour.
1. provide widely available information about employment opportunities
2. provide employment information in English language thus enabling flow of information and workers in the European Union which Slovenia is eager to join.
Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia is the principal national institution dealing with employment issues. The cooperation with the Jozef Stefan Institute is going on for well over ten years. In the last two years, cooperation and results have substantially increased.
It is expected that an appropriate information system could influence global benefits in employment and national economic growth. Second, data and programs will be transformed into English thus enabling full international cooperation for employed, unemployed and employees at least with the countries that will sign appropriate agreements.
The scientific part of the project will be based on artificial intelligence methods such as intelligent agents, new approaches in machine learning and natural language understanding. These scientific approach offers several possible improvements over classical rigid systems. It is reasonable to integrate AI methods in information system at various levels, e.g. for transforming Slovenian texts into English, or for intelligent-personal-agent support in advising and adapting to specific users.
Slovenia has 120.000 unemployed
2.000.000 inhabitants
unemployment is one of major problems
thers is no simple solution; we can soften the problem, tune the system
it is hard to get good workers in specific professions
we can perform 'suboptimal' matching - appropriate profiles for specific positions
an important aim of the problem is establishing contacts with EU
runs on UNIX, HP, Internet, 10.000 lines of C code, 30Mb
runs in cooperation with the Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia
offers additional news, presentation, scholarships
has a couple of major applications (modules):
The system received around 2-300.000 calls in 1 year; among most often visited
overall successful, one of the first in EU and in the world
The whole system will have to run in English
From UNIX it will be ported to NT, PC, and probably Oracle
We intend to modify and extend also the application part (the current system was designed 3 years ago)
Managemen and organisation is an important part of this project since we depend strongly on political decisions and our partners.
In 1997, the system was designed as a prototype providing employment information in Slovene and English (http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/~ema/). The system runs 24 hours a day and provides information in Slovene and English language. The system is far the most often visited employment site in Slovenia. It was also quite probably the first employment system in the world to offer the information about all available jobs in any country.
The English version is implemented at a rather initial (prototype) stage, but already enables understanding to a reasonable point. It is constantly being upgraded. The first translations started in October 1997.
An important feature of the system is its agent orientation. Currently, the Microsoft agent is implemented for speech. It enables (http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/RZZ_doc/pd/rzzservy-a.html) authomatic speech synthesis in English. We are also developing speech synthesis in Slovene language. First tests are promising.
In 1997 we have presented the system as several scientific conferences.
In the first year of the project the main objective was to implement the employment system on the Internet with some parts in English in a prototype version. The goal was achieved since the system is running and offering information partly in Slovene and partly in English. The decision has been made to transform the system from current UNIX to C platforms. All preparatory phases were performed as well.
(partially or fully related to the project)
M. Gams: Intelligent Agents - A New SW Breed, Proc. of Information Technology Interfaces ITI'97, June 16-19, pp. 111-116, Pula, 1997.
M. Gams, M. Grobelnik: Intelligent Agents and Information Society, Proc. of ERK'97, Portoroz, pp. 125-128, 1997.
M. Gams: EMA - An Intelligent Employment Agent, Proc. of the IASTED Intelligent Information Systems, Bahami, (accepted, financed by other sources), December 1997.
M. Gams: EMA - An Intelligent Employment Agent, Proc. of the IASTED Intelligent Information Systems, America, IEEE, IASTED, pp. 497-502, 1997.
M. Gams, A. Karalic, M. Drobnic, V. Krizman: EMA-An Intelligent Employment Agent, Proc. of the Forth World Congress on Expert Systems, Mexico, (accepted), 1998.
Cena informacijske nepismenosti (lecture in Slovene), 8.5.1995, Informatika, Gospodarsko razstavisce, Ljubljana
Inteligentni agenti na osebnih racunalnikih in Internetu (seminar in Slovene, 4 hours), 27.5.1997, IJS-Reaktor
Intelligent systems and security (invited lecture), ICSQ'79, November 19, 1997, Maribor.
In addition and before expected, a prototype of translating available jobs in English is implemented ( http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/RZZ_doc/pd/rzzservy-a.html).
Although it achieves around 90% translated words and sentences, it already enables reasonable understandability to English speaking society. The system also incorporates the agent with speech synthesis (again alreaady available but not fully operational).
Contacts have been established with other national employment programs and institutions, such as the Ministry for labor etc. Our partner, the Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia (http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/RZZ_doc/rzzmenua.html), reported about the project at the general meeting of European employment offices. See also http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/~ema/EMA_Links-e.html.
The system is available through the Internet, therefore it is always possible to check results. Related National employment offices in Europe and employment instutitions in the world are available at our system on the Internet (see international links at http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/~ema/EMA_Links-e.html where several related systems especially from the developed world (USA, Canada) are described. Our system is currently among state-of-the-art world-wide competition in the sense that it enables speech and national employment data. To our knowledge, no other system does it in the world. But overall, more advanced employment functions and larger no. of items are offered by employment institutions in larger countries such as USA. Compared to Europe (see http://www-ai.ijs.muzej.si/~ema/EMA_Links-e.html) our system and the Employment Service of Republic of Slovenia present the information at above average level.