Ontology-driven parliamentary analytics: analysing political debates on COVID-19 impact in Canada

Sabrina Azzi*, Stéphane Gagnon

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

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Abstract

Parliamentary debates are usually published in Parliament’s websites to allows citizens to be informed on the latest national debates, proposals and decisions. To enhance citizen experience and engagement, functionalities such as debates annotation and question answering are necessary. Annotating text requires semantic content and ontologies are known for their ability to describe a common vocabulary for a domain and can be a solid base for annotation and question answering. We report on an ongoing study to enhance parliamentary analytics using an ontology and knowledge graph to sharpen annotations and facilitate their query by end-users. As a salient case, a sample of debates are collected on the COVID-19 impact in Canada, as its complexity shows the relevance of using advanced knowledge representation techniques. We focused on the development of a new “Impact of COVID-19 in Canada Ontology” (ICCO) that provides contextualized semantic information on impact in numerous policy areas, as this ontology is entirely built from Canadian parliamentary debates. It has been evaluated and validated by experts. Our conclusion underscores the importance of integrating ontology-driven parliamentary analytics within the broader context of digital transformation in legislative institutions, and the need for new platforms supporting free and open Digital Humanities.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationElectronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective
Subtitle of host publication12th International Conference, EGOVIS 2023, Penang, Malaysia, August 28–30, 2023, Proceedings
EditorsAndrea Kö, Enrico Francesconi, Adeleh Asemi, Gabriele Kotsis, A Min Tjoa, Ismail Khalil
PublisherSpringer Cham
Pages89-102
Number of pages14
ISBN (Electronic)9783031398414
ISBN (Print)9783031398407
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Jul 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
PublisherSpringer
Volume14149
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Keywords

  • ontology
  • COVID-19
  • parliamentary debate

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