Document summarization for enhanced accessibility and comprehension

Bill drafting and amendments

Italy - Senate

Use case ID: 026

Author: Senate of Italy

Date: 12 June 2024 

Objective: 

Provide users with concise and accurate summaries of legislative bills and other parliamentary documents using artificial intelligence (AI)-powered summarization, enhancing the accessibility and comprehension of complex information.

Actors: 

  • Senate website users (citizens, researchers and journalists)
  • Senate IT and web development team

Prerequisites: 

  • Existing database of legislative bills and other parliamentary documents
  • Trained large language model (LLM)-based AI model for text summarization
  • Internet accessibility for users

Scenario: 

  1. The user accesses the Senate website.
  2. The user searches for a specific legislative bill or parliamentary document.
  3. The system retrieves the full text of the document from the database.
  4. The user requests a summary of the document (e.g. “Provide a summary of this bill on education reform.”).
  5. The LLM-based AI model processes the document and generates a concise summary highlighting key points, objectives and implications.
  6. The summary is displayed to the user in an easy-to-read format.
  7. The user can ask follow-up questions or request more detailed information on specific sections.
  8. The system logs the request and the generated summary for continuous improvement of the application.

Alternate flows: 

  • If the document is too complex or lengthy for an immediate summary, the system may take additional processing time and inform the user.
  • If the user requests summaries for multiple documents, the system processes each request sequentially and provides summaries one by one.

Expected results: 

  • User satisfaction is improved owing to quick and accurate summaries of complex documents.
  • Accessibility and understanding of legislative and parliamentary content are increased.
  • It takes less time and effort for users to comprehend lengthy documents.
  • Engagement with the Senate website and its resources is improved.

Potential challenges: 

  • Ensuring the LLM-based AI model can accurately summarize diverse types of documents
  • Handling documents with legal language, or with multiple sections and amendments
  • Continuously updating the LLM-based AI model to adapt to new types of documents and legislative language

Data requirements: 

  • Database of current legislative bills and other parliamentary documents

Integrations with other systems: 

  • Existing Senate website infrastructure
  • LLM-based AI processing systems and models
  • User interface components for displaying summaries

Success metrics: 

  • Query response time
  • User satisfaction ratings and feedback
  • Accuracy and relevance of the generated summaries

 

The Use cases for AI in parliaments collection is published by the IPU’s Centre for Innovation in Parliament as part of the Parliamentary Data Science Hub’s project to create guidelines for AI governance in parliaments.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. It may be freely shared and reused with acknowledgement of the author and the IPU. 

A use case describes how a system should work. It is used to plan, develop and measure implementation. A use case is not the same as a case study, which is a descriptive text of an actual project’s implementation. Please note that this use case is provided “as is” and neither the IPU nor the author accepts any responsibility for its use.

For more information about the IPU’s work on artificial intelligence, please visit www.ipu.org/AI or contact [email protected].