Ascoe Develops On-Premises AI Procedure Guidance System "Navitron" for Municipalities Using NVIDIA Nemotron Open Model

Ascoe Partners Inc. (Location: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Hideyuki Yasui; hereinafter referred to as Ascoe Partners) has developed "Navitron," a navigation system designed to clearly guide users through administrative procedures for municipalities and other government bodies, tailored to their specific situations.

Navitron is a procedure guidance system for municipalities that integrates Ascoe's administrative procedure guidance "egNavi Engine" with "NVIDIA Nemotron-Nano-9B-v2-Japanese," a Japanese-language SLM operating on NVIDIA DGX Spark provided by NVIDIA.

A key feature of Navitron is that the AI does not make independent judgments about regulations. Instead, the egNavi Engine organizes candidate procedures based on structured regulatory information and decision logic it holds, and the AI then supplements and summarizes these results in an easy-to-understand manner.

By having Nemotron-Nano-9B-v2-Japanese supplement and summarize the judgment results and on-screen status in natural Japanese, it realizes a guidance experience that is easy for residents to understand and for staff to explain. Furthermore, by operating within an inference environment built on NVIDIA DGX Spark, it is designed to be completed within an on-premises environment inside the municipality's building or a designated facility, without sending personal information or input content to external AI services in the cloud. This makes it easier to consider the introduction of procedure guidance utilizing generative AI even in administrative fields where personal information protection and security requirements are stringent.

Background of Development

Administrative procedures in municipalities vary by target person, conditions, required documents, and application destination depending on the system, making it difficult for residents to grasp the procedures they need.

While expectations are high for the use of generative AI, careful consideration is required in the administrative field regarding the handling of personal information and the accuracy of responses.

Navitron was developed to address these challenges by aiming to achieve both accuracy in regulatory judgments and easy-to-understand explanation support by AI.

Features of Navitron

1. Procedure Guidance Based on Structured Rules, Not Independent AI Judgment

With the regulatory and procedural judgment logic of the egNavi Engine at its core, the AI functions as an assistant to convey the judgment results derived by the egNavi Engine to residents in an easy-to-understand manner, rather than making free-form regulatory judgments.

2. Separation of Judgment Logic and Explanations Enables Verifiable Output

Navitron separates the logic that forms the basis for regulatory judgments from the explanatory text displayed to residents.

This makes it easier to confirm the conditions under which candidate procedures were displayed, facilitating verification and modification by the municipality and maintenance during system changes.

While leveraging the natural explanatory power of generative AI, the configuration ensures accuracy, transparency, and maintainability required for administrative procedure guidance.

3. On-Premises Configuration That Does Not Transmit Personal Information to External AI Services

By operating Nemotron-Nano-9B-v2-Japanese on DGX Spark and completing processing within the municipality's building or a designated facility, it can be used without sending resident responses or consultation information to external AI services.

4. Predictable Cost Structure Independent of Usage-Based Fees for External API Calls

Unlike usage-based fees dependent on external AI API usage, operational costs primarily consist of equipment, maintenance, and electricity expenses.

5. Supports Easy-to-Understand Guidance for Both Residents and Staff

It helps residents understand necessary procedures and confirmation items more easily, and can be used by staff to assist with explaining regulations and conducting interviews.

NVIDIA DGX Spark Desktop AI Supercomputer

Equipped with the NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, NVIDIA DGX Spark delivers up to 1 petaFLOP of FP4 AI performance in a power-efficient, compact form factor. The pre-installed NVIDIA AI software stack and 128 GB of memory enable developers to prototype, fine-tune, and deploy the latest inference AI models.

https://www.nvidia.com/ja-jp/products/workstations/dgx-spark/

Anticipated Use Cases for Navitron

• Support for procedure guidance at municipal counters

• Resident guidance via in-building terminals and consultation booths

• Assistance for staff in explaining regulations and conducting interviews

• Guidance for procedures with many conditional branches, such as childcare, welfare, nursing care, single-parent support, and moving in/out

• Utilization of generative AI in closed network and on-premises environments

• Procedure guidance tailored to the specific regulations and business flows of each municipality

Future Developments

Ascoe plans to expand the use of Navitron in accordance with the specific regulations and business flows of each municipality, developing it as a system that contributes to the efficiency of resident services, support for counter operations, and improvement in the quality of regulatory guidance.

Furthermore, by leveraging the procedure guidance mechanisms cultivated in the administrative field, Ascoe is also considering its application to guidance support in the private sector, such as finance and healthcare, where accuracy, accountability, and personal information protection are required.

【Company Profile】 ● Name: Ascoe Partners Inc. ● President and Representative Director: Hideyuki Yasui ● Date of Establishment: February 8, 2010 ● Business Activities: Administrative service-related information provision business using Universal Menu, content, database, and website construction support business related to Universal Menu, administrative-related advertising business ● Company HP: https://www.asukoe.co.jp/ ● "GDX TIMES," a media delivering various voices related to administrative DX with a focus on user perspective: https://gdx-times.com/