ACCESSING PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES IN THE ROMANIAN CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES Marian Boţocan Vilnius, 5-6 Octomber 2006

How we made proceedings in the Chamber of Deputies easier to follow? - Before the sittings: - During the sittings: - After the sittings: agenda live webcast and voting records full text of proceedings - Bill tracking system - Questions & interpellations - Parliamentary motions - MP’s parliamentary activity

Before the sittings - Agenda - links to documents - links to bills

During the sittings (online) Live webcast: –100 kbps stream –Real Player, Windows Media Player –2 audio channels (floor + simultaneos interpretation system) –Online archive since Dec.2003 (integrates textual information of the current speaker and the business being discussed based on text-to-speech alignment)

During the sittings (online) Voting records: Bosch DCN – Parliamentary voting system exports text file after each voting session Exported files are loaded into the DB Voting records: –published on the Internet –linked to the bill involved in vote –linked to “How did he/she vote?” page for every MP. Global vote result is captioned on the live webcast All the actions above are automatically performed (in less than 5 sec.)

After the sittings – (1 or 2 days) stenography service produces text files with markups based on markups, text file is divided into records each record contains information about the speaker and the item on the agenda records are loaded into database ORACLE RDBMS Link to the bill progress page Link to the MP’s parliamentary activity page

Text-to-speech alignment select the text record listen and watch the video press START btn. (start time is memorized) press STOP btn. (stop time is memorized) press SAVE btn. (start-stop times corresponding to the selected text record are saved into the DB) select next text record and continue the process

Text-to-speech alignment use webcast with captioning the name of the speaker + the item on the agenda webcast video-audio segments join one or more video-audio segments from one or more video files (sittings) in a video clip. statistical data how long did it take to debate on …?

Webcast with captioning Microsoft - SAMI format (Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange) Real Networks – RealText and SMIL standard (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)

Webcast video-audio segments

Statistical data How long did it take to debate on –legislative business (bill no….) –parliamentary control (question, interpellation, motion) –political declaration How long was the speech of –a political group –a Member

Future plans Live webcast and vote records for: - standing committees - standing bureau

Thank you very much! I welcome any questions you may have.