National Assembly of Québec

Connecting to the public and fostering transparency

National Assembly of Quebec is one of the world's oldest Parliaments - dating to 1792. Not surprisingly, the parliament has amassed volumes of parliamentary proceedings. Since a true, representative democracy depends on an informed public in order to actively and constructively participate, the National Assembly wanted a means to increase public awareness as well as the dialogue between government and its citizens - particularly its younger audience. The challenge was that information was stored in a variety of formats and there was no uniform way to move content from archives to online - therefore disenfranching the public from relevant information.

The Nstein DAM (Digital Asset Management) provides a singular hub into which all content from all archives flow, are structured and organized for reuse. The content is transformed into XML which can then be fed into any digital channel - including the National Assembly's homegrown content management system. The TME (Text Mining Engine) automatically semantically each piece of content and pushed that metadata into the DAM. This "intelligent hub" of centralized content made it easy for Web producers to facilitate multi-channel delivery.

The new capabilities enable the National Assembly to easily reorganize vast amounts of content in ways that helps demystify government and spur interest. Online petitions and feedback for bills are also automatically semantically annotated - which allows easy internal routing to the relevant department.