Applications: The Expert Counselling System

A knowledge-based decision support system
to help people find or keep work.

The Problem

Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) provides employment counselling services for Canadians. Employment counselling involves assessment of a person's employment situation and development of strategies to attain goals related to increasing the client's employability. In client-centered counselling, the counsellor and client do this together, but some clients are unprepared and this drastically reduces the productivity of counselling. Other clients are capable of handling their employment problems but need information or direction to available services that can help them. Valuable counselling time could be saved if these clients could receive this information by other means. The challenge was to reduce the number of people seeking counselling services unnecessarily and to improve the effectiveness of counselling for those who do need it.

The Solution

HRDC had commissioned Acquired Intelligence to develop the Employment Counsellor's Assistant (ECA) to help counsellors deliver their services more consistently and effectively to clients. The Manager of the Human Resource Centre in Saanich asked Acquired Intelligence to work with a counselling consultant (Reinhard Schlosser) and a community service provider (Dawn McCooey of Steps to Employment) to develop a kiosk-based computer program which clients could use on their own. This program would provide the services needed by most clients and better prepare those that did need extra services so that counselling would be more productive.

The ECS Project produced the Expert Counselling System (ECS), a user friendly expert system which clients can use to identify and clarify employment issues that may cause problems as they look for a job. It helps clients identify employment problems, sets goals to resolve these problems, provides tips on how to do this, and makes referrals to appropriate resources that can help clients achieve their goals. After entering basic personal information that is used to create a database record, clients are guided through a series of screens in which they:

describe their employment problem (with examples);
clarify this problem by describing what they've done and how that worked (with examples);
indicate their assumptions about work and how these might affect their job search (with examples);
list their assets and liabilities that might affect their employability (with examples); and
use this new understanding to revise their original problem description (with examples).

Examples are provided for each step to show clients the kind of information they should enter. Once they understand their problem, clients are ready to match it to those that people commonly encounter. A general problem area is selected, and then specific problems within that area are matched. If more information is needed, a closer match to a subproblem is requested. Once matched to known problems, information can be provided that will help clients resolve their problem on their own or with the help of others. Goals provide a positive action that clients can achieve together with goal-related tips to help them do it. Clients get a list of local community resources that are available to help them achieve each goal on their own, in a group or with help from a counsellor.

The ECS is an integrated software system that can be configured to operate as a touchscreen kiosk or stand-alone computer application. An Acquire^® knowledge base represents the reasoning underlying employment counselling; Visual Basic controls the touchscreen interface; Microsoft Access stores information; and the Acquire^®SDK links the components together.

Conclusion

The Expert Counselling System provides is a self-operating employment advisor which clients can use on their own when they need it. The ECS:

uses an easy to use touchscreen interface;
helps people describe their employment situation;
tells people about issues that may affect their situation with examples;
encourages people to match their situation to known problems;
provides tips and advice about how to handle these problems; and
lists resources (books and local advisors, work groups, and service agencies, etc.) that can help.

Any system can be improved. The ECS was designed for easy adaptation to suit local needs: the Administration Suite can be used to change the information provided by the ECS and the way it is presented.