Galway County Council Launches Revamped Bilingual Website

Galway County Council has launched a completely redesigned bilingual website aimed at delivering faster, clearer, and more accessible information to residents, businesses, and visitors.

The new site, available at Gaillimh.ie and Galway.ie, was developed by award-winning Irish web services company Annertech. It now offers 100 per cent Irish-language content, improved translation management, and the ability to deliver dynamic updates including rich media, event announcements, and severe weather alerts.

Core services, including Planning, Housing, Environment, Libraries, Climate Action, Community, and Business and Economy, are easily accessible from the home page. Visitors can also sign up for location-based alerts on road works, planning applications, severe weather, and community notices through the MapAlerter service.

With the majority of users accessing the site on mobile devices, page layouts automatically adjust to fit smartphones and tablets.

Liam Conneally, Chief Executive of Galway County Council, said, “We have incorporated the views of elected members and the public, along with best practices in local government web service delivery, when redesigning the site. This ensures that the most up-to-date information about our services is presented in a modern, user-friendly interface with improved navigation and accessibility features.”

Katie O’Connor, Director of Finance, Motor Tax, ICT and Digital Transformation, described the launch as “a major step forward in making our services clearer, faster, and more accessible.”

She added, “The upgraded bilingual site ensures reliable access to council information and services at all times. It follows the Local Government Service Catalogue, presenting information around what people need.”

Michael Martyn, Head of Information Systems, commented, “By rewriting all content in plain English and Gaeilge, building on an open-source platform, and making Irish-language content a core feature, we are making it easier for people to find what they need, when they need it. This is about putting the user first, whether they are a resident, a business, or a visitor to Galway County.”

The site is built on Local Government Drupal, an open-source platform shared by councils in Ireland and the UK, with sharing of additional development and features on a build-once, share-many basis.

Visit www.Gaillimh.ie and www.Galway.ie.

Jabra unveils AI-powered speech enhancement solution for contact centre professionals

Jabra has announced the launch of Jabra ClearSpeech, an AI-driven solution to remove unwanted noise for a better and clearer audio experience. The quality of the audio experience is paramount to contact centres, and this innovative technology provides an AI-driven solution to mitigate distracting noise, enhancing speech on calls. 

Launching as an integrated part of Engage AI, Jabra ClearSpeech is being introduced to help users focus on what really matters – the customer conversation at hand, rather than repetition and mistakes. By enhancing speech in the far end and removing background noise it helps headset users better understand what is being said. 

Getting to the core of contact centre conversations 

The audio quality in contact centres greatly impacts key metrics like customer and agent experience and average handle time. In fact, background noise hinders 76%* of interactions, causing frustration on both sides of the call. Improving far-end audio quality can reduce average handle time by more than 30%*, as clear communication minimises the need for repetition.  

Jabra analysed 1.5 million calls and found that 2/3** of the far end audio is non-speech. In addition, another study showed that 69%*** of agents reported that noise negatively impacts their wellbeing, adding to their cognitive load and reducing call satisfaction. Jabra ClearSpeech was specifically designed based on such data, with the aim of mitigating these factors with high-quality technology, in turn helping to reduce agent attrition, and ultimately save costs. 

Optimising calls with AI speech enhancement and noise suppression

Jabra ClearSpeech is an AI speech enhancement and noise suppressor that aims to improve agent wellbeing and motivation by removing far-end noise, as it is ‘taught’ to distinguish between speech and non-speech, such as echoes, music from the radio in the background, barking dogs or traffic. The feature will be available directly within Engage AI Voice Coaching Software. It will improve the agent experience and show that with better audio, AI will improve speech to text accuracy too, for all-round optimisation. 

Jabra aims to give full control of the conversation quality to professionals through this new feature Jabra ClearSpeech coupled with a Jabra headset, improving employee wellbeing, productivity, and overall comfort. 

Anders Hvelplund, SVP for Headsets BU Enterprise at Jabra said: “We have analysed millions of conversations; the quality of a conversation can only be as good as its lowest denominator. If the ‘other side’ is calling from a busy street corner, a bad connection, or while driving a car and listening to the radio, your conversation will inevitably be impacted by those conditions. And that’s what Jabra ClearSpeech can help you with. Facilitating clear speech through our technology is a big focus for Jabra, which we work very hard on, particularly as voice becomes increasingly important when it comes to AI prompts.”  

Jabra ClearSpeech will be available in all markets and will work with any Jabra headset. Engage 40 and Engage 50 II users have the possibility to control ClearSpeech directly on the hardware through control units.  

Jabra ClearSpeech is available today via a free upgrade for current Engage AI customers. Please find out more information at https://www.jabra.com/engageai