[Ed Hammond]

mySociety, the people who administer "WhatDoTheyKnow?" (a service collating FOI requests) and other similar services, are mooting the prospect of establishing a "local Hansard" service to transcribe council meetings.

http://www.mysociety.org/2012/09/12/unof...cal-level/

Personally I think it's a jolly good idea (this may or may not be the official CfPS view, I will have to ask the boss if he concurs). Bit ambitious, and I'm not sure there'll be a groundswell of interest in O&S (worse luck). But I was wondering what people thought of this - particularly, what your Monitoring Officers might think of someone showing up at the back of a meeting with a laptop and a tape recorder, and then uploading a full verbatim transcript of the meeting onto a public website. And councillors may have views too...

Back in the dim and distant days when I was a Dem Services officer I was always told to be as spare with my minutes as possible to minimise the risk of misunderstandings or mistranscription. I have even heard that often, on distributing minutes to officers for comments, minute-takers sometimes get replies asking that comments and statements are inserted into the minutes that weren't actually made, because the officer in question forgot to make them at the time. Not that such a request has *ever* been made of me you understand. When no other record of the meeting existed this was all fairly straightforward. But when there are two versions, and one is more detailed than the other, and they are at variance... what to do?

[Shelley Burke]

Hmmm interesting. I've been longing for some version of this technology for years and have tried and failed with various devices and been reminded why we use bright human brains to interpret, summarise, etc

A few points:

I think I'm right in saying councillors don't have any form of privilege in respect of their comments in council meetings. I value the opportunity for councillors/witnesses to be frank and at times edgy in their discussions, and I'd be concerned about that being diluted - I suppose that's the chilling effect and praps it's exaggerated?

Again thinking practically, isn't it the case that Hansard allows MPs and peers to tidy up the draft That would not be part of the deal under this model

And I suspect we'd probably end up needing to produce the "official" summary alongside the raw transcript, so all sorts of possibilities for contradiction there!

(18-09-2012 04:03 PM)Ed Hammond Wrote:  mySociety, the people who administer "WhatDoTheyKnow?" (a service collating FOI requests) and other similar services, are mooting the prospect of establishing a "local Hansard" service to transcribe council meetings.

http://www.mysociety.org/2012/09/12/unof...cal-level/

Personally I think it's a jolly good idea (this may or may not be the official CfPS view, I will have to ask the boss if he concurs). Bit ambitious, and I'm not sure there'll be a groundswell of interest in O&S (worse luck). But I was wondering what people thought of this - particularly, what your Monitoring Officers might think of someone showing up at the back of a meeting with a laptop and a tape recorder, and then uploading a full verbatim transcript of the meeting onto a public website. And councillors may have views too...

Back in the dim and distant days when I was a Dem Services officer I was always told to be as spare with my minutes as possible to minimise the risk of misunderstandings or mistranscription. I have even heard that often, on distributing minutes to officers for comments, minute-takers sometimes get replies asking that comments and statements are inserted into the minutes that weren't actually made, because the officer in question forgot to make them at the time. Not that such a request has *ever* been made of me you understand. When no other record of the meeting existed this was all fairly straightforward. But when there are two versions, and one is more detailed than the other, and they are at variance... what to do?

[Laura Latham]

Hi All,

Whatever may happen as regards this, legally the minute will still be the formal record of the meeting. So as such, having a transcript of the meeting would add nothing to the formal record.

I'm also not keen that the inference has been made that pressure would be placed on DSO's to include things which weren't said in meetings in the minute. The DSO independence I suppose means that we may be 'creative' in favour of certain points but would be legally aware of the consequences of writing into minutes things which definitely weren't discussed.

I also think Councillors may not like an 'unedited' version of what they say. We use verbatim parts in Council minutes at Richmond and would always have the courtesy to tidy up the word order etc so as to make sense. It may also lead to scripting meetings more closely so as to minimise the risk of any issues arising from undedited verbatim transcripts.

I would suggest that if people are wanting to see a full view of a meeting then Local Authorities should be lobbied to web cast meetings rather than independent organisations / individuals transcribing them word for word....

Just my view.

Many thanks

Laura Latham

[Ed Hammond]

Hi Laura - sorry, the inference was rather that it's something that occasionally happens - in my instance, when I was a DSO it was a Head of Service who would often come back to you asking for things to be put in that he'd wished he'd said, but didn't - and obviously all such attempts were politely but firmly rebuffed (it helped that we tape-recorded meetings, although at the time this was unusual practice).

mySociety are taking on a big task here - the idea is a compelling one but the more I think about it, the more that I think that it may be that webcasting, in combination with the minutes, presents a more accurate and comprehensive picture. It'll be something to watch with progress. Maybe I'll volunteer to help them with my own local council (Shelley, that's you...)

[Jessica Mulley]

An intriguing idea - and one which opens up a whole series of scrutiny options. In the Commons there is far more to Hansard than simply being a verbatim report of debates, indeed it isn't exactly verbatim. People simply do not speak in a way that is digestible to read. Speech tends to be full of incomplete thoughts, unending sentences, and dependent for interpretation on tone, inflection and body language. None of this can be reproduced textually, so editing is essential to the provision of a useful output. I wonder how mysociety are going to tackle that. Video recording, where all the 'extras' are caught, seems a simpler way to capture debates with precision if editing isn't an option.