Next: 6.3. Votes and Proceedings Previous: 6.1. Motions and Questions  

6.2. Debate Records

Debate Records
The Hansard is the official verbatim record of Parliamentary debate. It is the only authenticated point of recording and reporting of parliamentary proceedings.

Data model
The following functions will be required:

Automated Rota Preparation
The duration of a take will be parameter driven (Default value will be 10 minutes). The system will identify the reporters available to cover a House sitting using the reporter's attendance register. A schedule listing the time each available reporter is to report to the chamber will be generated in the following manner:

• The least experienced reporters will be assigned the first takes.
• The most experienced reporters will be assigned the final takes.
• When the number of takes exceeds the number of available reporters, the more experienced reporters will be assigned the remaining takes.
• Each available reporter will be assigned at least one take.

The system will allow the administrator to define the duration of a take. The system administrator may redefine the duration of a take at any time. However, the new take definition will affect only subsequent rotas generated by the system. The following attributes are required for the rota:

Automated notification on rota generation
The system will generate and send an email with the generated rota to all available reporters as well as to all readers, mergers and editors as listed in a pre-defined list.

Generation of Reference Labels
An optional feature that can be turned on or off will be required for producing labels to be used to tag the physical media that stores the recordings of each House sitting. The labels are unique for the identification of each sitting. Reference labels can have the following attributes

Register Reporter Attendance
Prior to each House sitting the system registers the attendance of reporters to identify reporters who will be available to produce the Hansard. This function will be performed prior to the daily rota preparation.

Register MPs Attendance
Throughout the duration of a House sitting, the attendance of Members of Parliament will be captured.

Reporter Notification
The system should make a notification the concerned reporters to be present in the Chamber at a given time slot as per the rota.

Transcribing the recordings
Reporters process the transcripts produced by the digital recording system which records the debate in the House. A dedicated document editor for the Hansard transcription and editing process will be required that can provide names of MP's, date and time, and assist appropriate text formatting and addition of metadata at the click of a button. The reporter can speak out the recorded information using a microphone and then the speech recognition software converts it into text. He can then make the necessary corrections, polishing, formatting, styling, and colour codes. The text editor should be "intelligent" for example to provide only the names of members present in the session/meeting for selection etc. The document editor also should be able to natively produce XML files, validate and to convert the document to XML format. The Hansard document editor should be able track and store document changes, including the ability to accept/reject the stored changes all throughout the production and revision process of the Debate Records. This facility would be very helpful during transcript crosscheck. Version control should be inbuilt in the editor. The system should also have a tracking facility that records the status of transcripts, including details such as the transcriber's identification, date and time of transcribing, source transcribed, duration of transcription, file name and storage details of transcript, transcript crosschecking details, transcription approval details etc. A standard naming convention to identify each transcript is listed below:

Notification to reader
Upon completion of each transcript the reporter should be able to activate a notification to inform the reader that the transcript is complete and ready for review (crosschecking).

Review of transcripts
The reader cross-checks the transcript against the source recording and suggests changes if required. The reader confirms that each contributor is correctly referenced, the necessary metadata and cross-reference are present in the text and that the transcription corresponds to the actually utterances of the MPs.. Errors and omission details are documented in a standard review format. Upon completion of review the reader activates notification to the transcriber to make him/her aware that the review is over and review comments are available. The transcriber may accept the review comments after cross verifying with the relevant audio/video records. The system should record the review comments, action taken on review comments, date and time of action, reason to ignore review comments if rejected etc. After the transcriber has gone through the comments from the reader, a notification is sent to the reader to acknowledge that the transcript has been modified as per the comments and a new version of the document has been submitted for review. On receiving the notification, the reader should crosscheck the same and approve the changes.

Notification to merger
After the reader is satisfied, the system can notify the merger to initiate merging of transcripts.

Merging transcripts
After the transcription stage, the document editor should have the ability to automatically merge the transcripts produced by the different editors into one complete document (the merged transcript). All transcripts for a House sitting are required to be complete prior to final merging. Therefore a facility to easily identify the current processing state of all transcripts of House sittings at a glance would be required. This facility should check that all transcripts have successfully passed through all the earlier stages and have been submitted for merging. The merged text file will be written into the common repositories. Each transcript should be clearly demarcated in the parent document. The merger should be able to remove automatically these demarcations after validation of the merged document. The merger also checks for continuity of the document, and where there is discontinuity, the merger reviews the relevant transcript(s) to identify the reason for discontinuity. The merger also performs a grammar and spell-checks the entire document and approves the document.

Notification to Editor
Upon approval of the document merging the system notifies the editor that the merging process is complete. The Editor confirms that the merged document conforms to the required standards. A final spelling and grammar check is performed on the document. Errors detected are communicated to the reader using standard review sheets. The editors will ensure that the transcript accurately reflects the words spoken and that nothing has been omitted or misheard, that MPs or speakers are correctly identified, and that transcripts conform to the required style, ensuring that superfluous repetition and redundancies are removed and grammar is corrected. The audio and video files will be similarly edited. The Editor double-checks the draft against the speech on the audio files, ensuring that the text and the speech match accordingly. Corrections to the transcriptions indicated by the respective MPs are made at this stage. Final versions of the draft documents will be appropriately formatted and posted electronically on the National Assembly local area network / intranet, where MPs and Hansard staff, and those interested can access and read the text. Meanwhile the digital file corresponding to the edited text shall be transferred/written (or update an earlier version) to the repository.

Notifications to MP's
Electronic notifications will be sent out electronically on the Parliament's local network to alert members that the transcripts are ready for their review.

MP's review
At this stage, the provisional Hansard and the tagged video recording of the relevant House sitting is posted on the National Assembly local area network/intranet for end-user verification. Objections or corrections raised by a Member of Parliament are verified and resolved using the relevant transcripts and video recording. The appropriate modifications are made to the merged document and a version of the document is released. The Reader, Reporter and Editor are all involved in this stage.

Certification
After editing, the Hansard editor will then certify the document. This may include using an online certificate Authority e.g. Verisign to electronically certify a PDF version of the Hansard. The certified document will be converted to XML format; ready for publishing in appropriate formats - text, PDF, HTML etc. Each format will also be certified accordingly. Hard copy (camera ready) documents will be produced from the electronic versions of transcripts produced within the text editor, after all portions of an afternoon or evening or day's sitting are compiled. Several copies of the day's Hansard will be printed, and made available the following day.

Document Formatting for Print Version
For publication purposes, the final text will be formatted into smaller print size, arranged into columns, justified and hyphenated, ready for printing. A table of contents will be created using a macro for clipping headings from the text and inserting them into a separate document.

Website Hansard The final certified copy of the Hansard transcript will be uploaded to the National Assembly website as a HTML document and reformatted to facilitate online search capabilities. The document will also be published and posted in PDF format. By following the recommendations of the AKOMA NTOSO , the system will have built metadata into the documents which will facilitate searching and document linking for users. Comprehensive cumulative indexes of the proceedings of the House and its committees will also be produced to enhance searching.

Notification to printers The printers will receive the digital versions of the respective transcripts of the Hansard in appropriate publishing formats. The copies will have undergone certification.

Storage of the final Hansard The certified final digital and print versions of the Hansard document shall be stored in their respective repositories, with appropriate backup being made and stored in accordance with the National Assembly's backup policy.

Other services Indexes of the proceedings of the House and subject indexes for the entire session are produced and posted to the web. The Hansard staff may as well produce reprints of members' speeches or statements on request. Members or their staff may order reprints online by accessing the National Assembly's Intranet site An enhanced searching service, e.g. allowing users to find documents by MPs, dates, topics and other information fields will also be provided on the website based on the indexing and metadata built into the documents in the repository.

Next: 6.3. Votes and Proceedings Previous: 6.1. Motions and Questions