Bússola Tech Webinar on AI in Portuguese-Speaking Parliaments

BY BEATRIZ REY

In April, Bússola Tech hosted a webinar on Artificial Intelligence in Portuguese-speaking Parliaments, featuring speakers from Angola, Brazil, Mozambique, and Portugal. Participants reported on how their legislatures are incorporating AI into their workflows, including transcriptions of parliamentary debates and writing of meetings minutes. “AI has allowed us to work better with legislative data to help citizens understand parliamentary work,” highlighted Neemias Muachendo, IT Director at the Angolan Parliament.

The speakers also shared concerns they are working to mitigate — including the need to invest in error prevention or correction for automated technologies such as speech recognition used for transcription. With the potential for incorrect transcriptions due to accents or dialects, the speakers emphasized the need for ongoing human-in-the-loop review. As Filomena da Conceição,  Director-General of the Legislative Process at the Mozambique Assembly, put it, “the human hand guarantees reliability.”

Speakers also emphasized the need to shift gears on long-term planning to accommodate rapidly changing needs. Márcio Tancredi, Executive-Director at Brazil’s Senate, explained that the rapid pace of technological developments means that parliaments “can now plan for two years at most” for their own infrastructure.

The webinar was followed by an “AI in Legislatures” workshop with a demonstration of the Brazilian Senate’s experience using GenAI to produce summaries about budget proposals, a task previously done by legislative consultants. The consultants now start with the AI-generated summaries and revise as needed, freeing up additional time for  more substantive tasks.