Members of Swiss Parliament Services on a learning expedition in Japan

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Swiss and Japanese Parliamentary Services meet in Tokyo ©Embassy of Switzerland in Japan

In order to cope with increasing challenges, new technologies are used to produce written records of the parliamentary debates. The Japanese Parliament (Diet) has been using a transcription system with automatic speech recognition since 2010 and has been considered a leader in this field. On the other hand, the Swiss Parliament is known for its rapid publication of meeting records on the Internet – within one hour after the debate a written transcript is available online.

The meeting in Tokyo allowed the two sides to present their systems, to see how it is integrated into the workflow, to talk about lessons learned and to discuss future developments. The fruitful exchange and insight will allow the small delegation from Switzerland, which was led by the Head of the Official Bulletin of the Swiss Federal Assembly and which was supported by the Political Section of the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan, to further improve their system back in Berne.

There are many fields of common interests where Swiss and Japanese institutions can learn from each other. This collaboration, which was initiated back in 2004 with a visit of two parliamentarians to Switzerland, is an excellent example.