The Queensland Parliament has deployed a new publication system using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 to publish the Parliament’s record of Proceedings (Hansard) (transcripts of parliamentary proceedings). The success of the project, together with the need to create a SharePoint environment, has seen use of SharePoint extended to handle Intranet and it is now being considered for a range of other collaboration and content management applications.

Clerk of the Parliament Neil Laurie said, "We are also looking at utilising SharePoint for a range of other uses including contact databases, accommodation management systems, and records management.

"We use a variety of content management systems and many files and records are stored electronically in shared network folders. Parliamentary administrations are traditionally classic “silo organisations” with different solutions used by different organisational areas. SharePoint offers us the opportunity to transform these disparate systems into a more corporate base with appropriately automated workflow and collaboration practices."

"Once you get the environment in place it opens up a world of possibilities."

After a review of our Hansard publishing solution in 2012 a SharePoint platform was designed and developed by solution provider Dialog to replace an ageing publication system built on Adobe Framemaker. This system was over 10 years old and had been heavily customised for our Hansard requirements. The total spend for the the project was around $A300,000.

"We suffered from operational and efficiency issues with the previous system because the software was not flexible enough to keep up with the more modern software and operating systems which supported it, so we had to replace the old Hansard system. After we documented our business requirements we went out into the market and looked at various options," said Laurie

"Of the people that tendered pretty well all used, to some degree or other, SharePoint as a base platform. It is the Microsoft collaborative workflow product. Essentially, we ended up backing SharePoint to do the Parliamentary Reporting Services project. We were impressed internally by the SharePoint product and the power that it actually gives us to do other things.

"We are particularly impressed with its ability to be able to be used for multiple different databases and processes. Going forward, we see a lot of our older internal systems being migrated into the new SharePoint platform.

"We like it. We think it has a lot of good utility. We are using it for a whole range of things now.The other day my people in the Table Office from their own initiative have started putting precedents of the House on to the SharePoint platform and updating its own database. It is so easy to use. The IT people only had to be there for a little time as compared to what it would be under some of the older software products."

Hansard transcription is undertaken by a team of high speed Hansard reporters able to enter up to 240 words per minute using special phonetic keyboards in a Computer Aided Transcription (CAT) system. The reporters work in 10 minute shifts to keep up with debate on the floor of the Legislative Assembly and Parliamentary Committee hearings.

The complete Hansard transcript is created by assembling the multiple segments supplied by the individual reporters in a Word template created in SharePoint after which further editing takes place before publishing online and in hard copy. SharePoint and Word integrate to automate many tasks and work practices associated with the reporting, editing, publishing and management tasks.

All proceedings from 1992 onwards were initially captured and available in digital form. A project is underway to digitise earlier proceedings from the Queensland Parliament's opening in 1860.

There were two different projects in relation to the digitisation of Hansard: The first part completed in 2011 was to make searchable and available Hansard between 1860-1863 (which was reported in the Moreton Bay Courier (now known as The Courier Mail)). As bound hardcopy Hansard is only available from 1864, the Parliamentary Service accessed back issues of the Moreton Bay Courier from its microfilm collection, printed these off and then had them rekeyed by Parliament’s Hansard staff into a word document which was then turned into a PDF and OCR’d using Adobe software and then uploaded to the Parliament’s website.

The second project, currently underway, is to make available online Hansard between 1860-1992. This project started March 2013 and the years 1981 to 1991 have already been published.

The hard copy of transcript is scanned using Konica Minolta bizhub363 MFD (using general scanning software). Feeders were slightly modified to handle varying paper qualities. (B&W, 300dpi, B5, image adjustment: to remove paper discolouration, density: increased to compensate for image adjustment. Material scanned as a searchable PDF.)

The Software used for OCR & processing is Adobe Pro X. The process is to de-bind and trim all volumes, scan volumes (check & make sure all pages have been scanned),  split volumes into sitting days. Add cover page (with disclaimer), minimal metadata, make final adjustments, OCR files, and reduce file size, create XML files (for later use), upload to the Parliament’s sitecore internet.

The Queensland Parliament Record is unique among Australian parliaments in having a linked database of tabled documents.

"If a Member tables a document during the course of a speech, that tabling is now hyperlinked in Hansard to our tabled papers database, so every document that is presented in Parliament is digitally captured and online through our Web site as well," said Laurie.

Another digitisation project is now underway to make all documents tabled in Parliament since 1860 available online.