Transcript
Transcript: The ParlBrief Transcription Tool, by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
[00:00:00 Text on screen: AI Powered Projects in the Government of Canada; The ParlBrief Transcription Tool, by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.]
[00:00:03 Split screen: Kelly Fletcher and a colleague.]
Kelly Fletcher: Hello everyone. My name is Kelly Fletcher.
[00:00:06 Kelly Fletcher appears in full screen.]
Kelly Fletcher: I am the Deputy Director of Parliamentary Affairs at ISED.
[00:00:10 Text on screen: Kelly Fletcher, Deputy Director, Parliamentary Affairs, ISED]
Kelly Fletcher: I'm here to give a presentation on ParlBrief.
[00:00:22 Slide titled: ParlBrief. As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: This is the tool we are developing using artificial intelligence to prepare our parliamentary committee summaries. The idea came from one of our former directors who worked with our team, because of the time committee summaries were taking. We also have several committees that meet at the same time, simultaneously. So, it becomes difficult to make summaries when trying to watch several meetings. When we have to do transcriptions, it takes up a lot of our team's time, which essentially takes away from other work they could be doing. We were looking for a tool that was effective in helping us write parliamentary summaries.
[00:01:23 Slide titled: The Tool (1 of 3) As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: If we could go to slide number 3, Megan. Great.
When you open the ParlBrief tool, this is essentially the page you will see. As you can see, the setup is quite simple. What we need to do is take the web link of the meeting and insert it into the tool that we see here on the first page. Then, all you have to do is click Submit.
[00:02:00 Slide titled: The Tool (2 of 3) As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: On slide number 4, we see the page it brings us to. After approximately 15 minutes, the tool transcribes the text and provides us with a summary. Currently, summaries are only available in English, but we are working hard to make the tool bilingual and able to write summaries in French. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
[00:02:37 Slide titled: The Tool (3 of 3) Development and Deployment of ELYSIS Technology at Rio Tinto and Alcoa Facilities. As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: Megan, if we could go to slide number 5, please. We can see exactly what the tool can do. If we look at the left side of the slide, we see the date of the meeting, we see the witnesses who appeared before the committee, and then at the bottom left, we see the summary being written. And then on the right of the slide we see an example of a transcription. So, essentially, the tool can do two things: it can give us a transcript and it can give us a summary of the meeting that took place.
[00:03:20 On screen, a slide titled Workflow. In short: Video and audio extraction; Transcription by converting audio to text; Matching speaker IDs; Transcription revision by correction; Generation of a meeting summary. As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: If we move on to slide number 6. We get a better look at the technicalities and techniques. This slide, number 6, gives us a better look at what happens behind the scenes when using ParlBrief. As you can see, artificial intelligence plays a significant role at each stage of the process. The artificial intelligence team selected specific models with the necessary skills for what we want to do. We can see that they used OpenAI models that are very similar to ChatGPT. I would be happy to take questions during the Q&A period on this, but I think the graph shows us pretty much what was going on behind the scenes when we were developing the ParlBrief tool.
[00:04:38 Slide titled: Capabilities and Challenges. As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: On slide number 7, we talk a little about ParlBrief's capabilities, but also a little about the challenges we still have to overcome. With the ParlBrief system, we have had a lot of success over the last year in particular. Transcriptions and summaries of committee meetings are generally done very well. They are quite accurate and the tool is very easy to use as well. However, in terms of certain challenges, we continue to see that the tool is not yet perfect. We can see problems with spelling mistakes. When dealing with complex motions, the tool isn't very accurate yet and misses some important details, but we're continuing to move forward and overall, the tool is very...We have had a lot of success. However, we're not there yet, we're not at 100% yet. We continue to have a lot of repetition in the summaries we write. We are continuing testing to resolve these problems.
[00:06:04 Slide titled: Next steps… ISED will present an internal government digital monitoring report in winter 2026 to share the results of the pilot project. As described.]
Kelly Fletcher: If we continue to slide number 8 and in terms of the next steps. I mentioned that the tool is currently in the testing phase. We continue to conduct tests with some of our colleagues in other departments, with the teams working on parliamentary affairs. We consulted with the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board, and we are also working with ESDC. That was the first phase of testing. For what's coming in 2026, we're trying to expand the testing phase. We want to work with more departments and do even more testing to ensure that the tool becomes one that can be used regularly.
This is where we are right now. We will continue working to expand access to ParlBrief across the government, but we do not currently have a time line for when we can make the ParlBrief tool accessible to everyone.
[0:07:35 CSPS logo appears on screen.]
[00:07:37 Text appears on screen: canada.ca/school.]
[00:07:40 Government of Canada logo appears on screen.]
