The Department of Consumer Affairs is working towards efficient disposal of consumer cases.

In this regard, the Department issued an invitation for Expression of Interest (EoI) for appointment of Project Development Consultant (PDC) on 2nd September 2022.

The PDC shall be appointed to provide consultancy services for development of a technology for accurate speech recognition and machine learning system. The proposed project comprises of two verticals stated as follows- Vertical 1 is the Speech-to-text software. Speech-to-text is the need of the hour for the efficient disposal of consumer cases. There is an enormous pendency of cases at the district, state, and national level. The right of the consumers is adversely affected due to such huge pendency. The objective is to reduce the pendency at a consistent rate. Therefore, a speech-to-text software is required to accurately convert the dictation of the Commission President and Members into orders that can be readily uploaded after one review.

Vertical 2 is the Integration of machine learning within the software. Simply providing a speech-to-text software would not suffice to address the issue of efficient disposal of matters. A machine learning system shall be needed to be integrated within the speech-to-text software to inculcate the frequently used vocabulary in the Commissions for improving the accuracy of the software over time.

The finalised PDC would be given a sample recording of an actual order to facilitate the development of the software. Furthermore, a list of frequently used words and phrases shall also be provided to the shortlisted applicant for accurate recognition of legal terminologies.

Further details pertaining to terms of reference, scope of work, eligibility, guidelines to prepare and submit the EoI are given on https://consumeraffairs.nic.in/sites/default/files/file-uploads/latestnews/EoI_PDC.pdf. Last date to submit the EoI via e-mail on pk.tyagi13[at]nic[dot]in is 20th September 2022 by 1500 hours.