Who actually gets the interpreting assignment?
When a public authority needs an interpreter, there is more to that question than meets the eye. Beyond qualification, reliability and availability, it is also about equal treatment, corruption prevention and value for public money.
That is why matching at lingomatch is not “whoever happens to be free first”. We have built four routes for allocating an assignment. The authority decides which one applies — and several can be combined.
Four ways to allocate an assignment.
Each route follows a clear logic. The authority sets which one applies, based on its own rules.
Random selection
Several qualified, listed interpreters are asked at the same time. Whoever accepts first takes the assignment. Fast, when speed is what counts.
Rotation
So that work is shared fairly instead of always going to the same people, the system can rotate. Anyone already engaged within a period defined by the authority moves to the back of the queue for the next assignment — provided language and availability still fit. Fair distribution and corruption prevention.
Cost-effectiveness
Some authorities have agreed rates with their interpreters that differ from the statutory schedule. The system then queries the authority's own pool by the agreed rate — starting with the most economical offer. What otherwise means laborious work in spreadsheets happens automatically here.
Direct award
Sometimes one specific person should take the case, because they already know the proceedings, for example. Such a direct award only has to be justified — and it is exactly that justification the system records in an auditable way. If the person is unavailable, you can fall back on random selection or rotation.
The routes do not sit side by side — they interlock.
Random selection and rotation can be combined with cost-effectiveness, for instance, making fair, economical and fast allocation possible at the same time. All of this is already built into our app.
The authority makes the rules. We provide the technology.
lingomatch does not impose rules. The authority itself decides — usually on the basis of internal guidelines — what its matching should look like.