Speaker verification in operational environments - monitoring for improved service operation

There are very few, if any, published accounts of practical expe­ rience with Speaker Verification as a means to provide secure access to telematics services. Yet, there is no reason to expect that Speaker Verification is very different from speech recogni­ tion, for which many deployed services have shown the need for close and intensive on-line monitoring during the time when the service becomes operational. In this paper we present our expe­ rience with a monitoring scheme for Speaker Verification dur­ ing the field test of a financial investment game. Many of the issues that were monitored were suggested by our experience with a semi-operational service, viz. free access to Directory Assistance for visually impaired. A newly developed enrolment procedure, that can flag potentially weak speaker models, is an essential part of the monitoring procedure.