GovSnacks

Project Info

Team Name

Just Bryce

Team Members

Bryce Cronin

Project Description

GovSnacks

The issue: Information Overload
Every day that parliament sits...

...Thousands of pages of transcripts are published.
...Many, many hours of audio recordings are uploaded.
...Countless parliament sessions are livestreamed on YouTube.
...Stacks of Bills are considered, each potentially containing hundreds (or thousands) of pages of supplementary material.
...AND even the daily summaries are filled with bureaucratic jargon, making it hard for citizens to understand what's going on in their communities.

So... What good is all this information, and how can we engage with democracy, if the information we need is buried under mountains of incomprehensible text?

GovSnacks is the solution
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GovSnacks is an experiemntal tool designed to make parliamentary information more accessible and easier to understand. This is how it works:

Select: GovSnacks displays the latest open government Hansard report data from aph.gov.au, simply the select which report you're interested in learning more about.
Transform: GovSnacks than uses Artificial Intelligence to transform the copious information into easy-digestible bite-sized “snacks”.
Personalise: If you have a particular area of interest (eg. 'disability rights, 'immigration', or 'gender equity') simply enter it into the GovSnacks dashboard and discussions in parliament about your interest will be surfaced.

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Empowering Communities
This method of using AI in governance is designed to radically boost government transparency.

Enables everyone to understand and feel involved in democratic processes.
Builds trust in government services and helps to form a more cohesive democracy.
Enables everyone to make informed decisions and participate in civic life by removing bureaucratic jargon.

Technical Details

Built with Python: The code is available from GitHub and can be run locally - just enter your own AI API key.
Powered by AI: The OpenAI service processes up to 200 page reports and transforms them into succinct summaries.
Context-Aware: GovSnacks identifies key themes and important points, ensuring meaningful summaries.
Ethical and Responsible Use of AI: Steps taken include ensuring AI-generated summaries are as unbiased as possible and providing direct links to original sources for full context.

What's next?

I plan on automating the service and making it fully available as a web app.
I plan to add topic subscriptions, so that people can receive daily updates about discussions that have occurred in parliment around their specific topic, such as 'gender equity'.

Try it out!
🔗 Try GovSnacks today at GovSnacks.com for a demo with parliamentary summaries from August 2024!

GovSnacks is all about making government operations transparent by turning complex documents into simple, user-friendly summaries:

Boosting Transparency: Making government actions clear and accessible.
Empowering Citizens: Helping everyone engage in civic life with ease.
Open Source: Available on GitHub for anyone to use or integrate into existing platforms.

#civic responsibility #governance #ai #accessibility #disability

Data Story

Open data is retrieved from APH.gov.au Hansard reports. These reports are published in XML format and then transformed with AI to be more succinct and focus on a specified issue of interest.