The development of speech technology such as speech recognition (used in e.g. Apple’s Siri) is moving forward quickly, but for the most part Swedish is not used in these technologies. In order to develop speech based services that can be used in Swedish a national effort is required. For that reason, the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) has been commissioned to develop a bank for speech resources. The final report from this commission was delivered on the 31st of March 2017, and here PTS suggests SND as the most suitable administrator for such a bank. The reasons for this are SND’s clear interest in data administration, experience of handling metadata, participation in international organizations, and neutrality on the market. The Swedish Ministry of Education and Research will make a decision regarding the proposal during the spring of 2017.
You can read more about the commission and the final report at www.pts.se/sprakresursbank (in Swedish).