PoliMonitor launches “bold as brass” AI Parliamentary transcription service

Originally published on PubAffairs.

While not many people would know who Brass Crosby was, they’d likely heard of the idiom “bold as brass” which was inspired by this pioneering 18th Century politician who helped lay an important foundation stone for our Parliamentary democracy.

The story goes that back in 1771 Crosby, who was Lord Mayor of the City of London at the time and therefore chief magistrate for the City, had brought before him a printer who “dared” publish reports of Parliamentary proceedings. Having released the man, Crosby was ordered to appear before the House to explain his actions. In their wisdom, it was decided Crosby should be committed to the Tower of London. When he was brought to trial, several judges refused to hear the case and after protests from the public, Crosby was released. From that point forward, Parliament ceased to punish the publishing of its debates as harshly.

250 years after Crosby helped establish the legitimacy of reporting on Parliament, PoliMonitor aims to build on his legacy. This summer we launched our new automated transcription service, a verbatim record of what is said in the House of Commons and House of Lords Chambers as well as all the Bill and Select Committees. Instead of waiting hours or days for a hand written record to be produced and printed, we're now producing an instantly available record. To do this we analysed every debate in the House of Commons and House of Lords since 1990, over 60 years of Parliamentary debates to learn more about the words and phrases our policy makers are most likely to use. We identified over 202,000 words used by MP and Peers during this time.

Our AI enabled service moves things on from the 18th Century to the 21st Century with a flick of a switch. PoliMonitor users are now able to login and see the raw text from all the debates, saving hours in writing up committee sessions from scratch, or be alerted instantly if their terms are mentioned in any Chamber or Committee. Our users have already described this new service as "phenomenal" but this is only the start and loads more improvements are possible.

What Brass Crosby would have made of this development we’ll never know, but we hope it lives up to his fearless spirit and campaigning for a more transparent and accessible Parliament. We hope he’d have approved because in our book there is no higher compliment than being “as bold as brass”.

by Sam Cunningham, CEO and Co-Founder, PoliMonitor