The automation of public and governmental services requires an user interface, where users can query their needs and the service provides all related relevant information. This can be quite challenging, since the user queries contain informal formulations of the customer needs, which may differ strongly from the administrative jargon. Thus, the automated service has to understand the meaning of the queries and translate them to administrative jargon.

For example, the registration of a company requires an industry code. The official description of this industry code may be very different from the business purpose that a user formulates in free text. For example, if a user wants to register a beauty salon, he/she could enter 'I paint nails' and should find the right business code for beauty salons.

This is especially challenging if a business code includes a number of very diverse services. For instance, the business code 'Miscellaneous other services' includes piercing studios as well as facility management. Traditional keyword based approaches are therefore not promising to deliver good results.