Speech technology for reporting in the Flemish Parliament

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Initiator(s):

Flemish Parliament

Theme:

Digitalisation

Domain:

Governance

Active state:

In preparation

Contact:

Flemish Parliament
Lieve Beullens
+32 2 552 15 05

PIP
Erwin Dewallef
+32 472 72 40 48

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Challenge

Written reporting in the Flemish Parliament is a very labour-intensive process. It is often a race against the clock for the two departments that guarantee it.

The Verbatim Report department is responsible for the complete, literal reports of plenary meetings and interpellations and requests for explanations in committee meetings. The reports present the discussion chronologically in direct speech and are in principle published the day itself on the website of the Flemish Parliament.

The Committee department is responsible for the (synthesis) reports of discussions of parliamentary and government initiatives and petitions as well as hearings and exchanges of views in committee meetings. These reports are also published on the website of the Flemish Parliament as quickly as possible.

In addition, the Flemish Parliament also makes a video recording of the meetings available via its website.

In order to improve the working conditions of both departments and to make their reporting faster, more efficient and more accurate, the Flemish Parliament together with PIP wanted to explore the possibilities of speech technology and automatic transcription (from speech to text). In addition, the Flemish Parliament intended to use this project - if possible - to create live subtitling of the online video reports. After all, a joint offer of images, speech and text can promote the social inclusion of all kinds of target groups. For example, Dutch-language deaf and hearing-impaired people can follow the live subtitled debates better. The same goes for foreign speakers who have difficulty with Dutch. Or elderly people, who tend to revert more quickly to subtitling.

Preparation

To further focus the challenge and match demand to supply, an extensive market consultation was carried out in collaboration with Addestino.

Market consultation

The actual market consultation, organised by PIP together with the Flemish Parliament and Addestino, took place in the Flemish Parliament on 24 November 2017.

More than 35 participants, from - both domestic and foreign - companies and knowledge institutions, were present.

By means of an overview of 'use cases' or challenges (downloadable below), they showed what the technology has to offer in the short and long term to convert speech into text.

speech_technology_reporting_flemish_parliament_use_cases.pdf

Addestino recorded the results of this workshop in a report. The report (in Dutch) and a summary (in English) are available below.

spraaktechnologie_verslaggeving_vlaams_parlement_addestino_marktconsultatie_rapport.pdf

speech_technology_reporting_flemish_parliament_addestino_market_consultation_report_english_summary.pdf

Test day

As a follow-up to the market consultation of 24 November 2017, the Flemish Parliament and PIP organised a test day in the Flemish Parliament on 4 May 2018.

The aim of this test day was to validate the current technological possibilities (and their quality) of automatic transcription from Dutch-language speech to text and to further adapt them to the needs of the reporting services of the Flemish Parliament (= Proof Of Concept [POC]).

From the applications submitted for participation in the test day, three participants were selected, as was communicated in advance in the invitation. On the test day itself, they received three audio fragments (of about half an hour each) unknown to them and without accompanying speakers and reports, which they had to convert into textual reports using their speech-to-text model. At the end of the test day, the texts generated by the model were delivered. These texts were assessed by three reporters of the Flemish Parliament on the basis of the following criteria: (1) the time needed for the reporters to convert each piece of text into a 'finished report', (2) the type of errors or passages to be corrected (whether or not related to a specific speaker or grammatical construction, whether or not 'easily' semiautomatically correctable, etc.), (3) the percentage of accuracy of the speaker recognition, and (4) the similarity with the original report, according to the estimation of the editor who made this original report.

The conclusions of the test day were incorporated into a report available below.

speech_technology_reporting_flemish_parliament_test_day_report.pdf

Results

Conclusions test day: conclusion of the PIP project

From the results of the test day, the Flemish Parliament concluded that the current state of the speech-to-text technology for Dutch is insufficient to be useful for the reporting services of the Flemish Parliament. The use of this technology in the context of the Flemish Parliament does not result in efficiency gains but rather losses.

Therefore, to meet the needs of the Flemish Parliament, significant investments in the further development of the technology are still required. The Flemish Parliament has decided not to invest (financially) in this until further notice and thus not to take on the role of 'innovator'. However, the Flemish Parliament will continue to closely follow the further evolution of the technology and the market and, in this respect, will also keep in touch with other parliamentary assemblies (especially in the Dutch-speaking region) in order to possibly function as an 'early adopter' at the time when the technology has reached sufficient maturity to be used efficiently. In this sense, the Flemish Parliament also invites the research institutions and market players involved to make full use of the video files of its meetings, which are available as open data on its website, as test material for the further development of the technology.

This conclusion of the Flemish Parliament also marks the conclusion of this PIP project.