The Dutch Parliamentary Reporting Office

IPRS Meeting - Intersteno Congress - Prague July 2007

The Dutch Parliament, the States General, consists of two chambers, namely the House of Representatives (hundred and fifty members) and the Senate (seventy-five members).

On the twenty-fourth of September eighteen-forty-nine the Dutch Parliament decided to set up the Parliamentary Reporting Office. Ever since, the plenary debates of both chambers have been recorded verbatim by a team of 12 or 13 official reporters, who take 5 minutes-turns successively. The same goes for some of the meetings of standing committees, especially when bills or policy papers are discussed, and for hearings held before Parliamentary inquiry committees. During their turn the reporters make notes in long hand or in shorthand in the Chamber.

Since 2002 however, the on-the-job training of official reporters no longer includes shorthand writing; all reports are now made on the basis of tape recordings. Although verbatim, the report is edited in accordance with the grammatical rules of written Dutch. Quite a few committee meetings, however, are not recorded verbatim. This is the case when a standing committee discusses government policy issues in general. Instead, an official reporter makes a summary report of the whole meeting, stating the MPs' points of view, questions, answers , conclusions and promises made by the cabinet member concerned. Anyone working within Parliament, MPs and their staff as well as the Parliament's own officials, can make use of an on-line parliamentary glossary of terms, abbreviations, proper nouns etcetera , a service provided by the Parliamentary Reporting Office. The use of the glossary is encouraged, in order to enhance uniformity in spelling. The glossary is regularly updated. This service includes an email question- and answer-service in the field of language usage. Another language tool that the official reporters have at their disposition is a flexible, expandable spelling checker, to which specific terms and proper nouns can be added. A new development within the Parliamentary Reporting Office is the introduction of the so-called short summary report of committee meetings, in which only the questions asked by MPs, the cabinet member's answers to these questions, conclusions and promises are included.

A range of major changes in the working method of the Parliamentary Reporting Office will be introduced in January 2008. First, Digital audio recordings of the proceedings will replace analog tape recordings. Second, the official reporters will be sent a digital sound file for transcription, instead of taking notes themselves in the Chamber. Yet, there will always be an official reporter "on the floor", who makes "digital notes" throughout the sitting, that are relevant with regard to the transcription. The new working method will enhance the efficiency of the Parliamentary Reporting Office.

When the new President of the House of Representatives came into office after the 2006 general elections she decided to have a report of the proceedings published on the House's website not later than one hour after the conclusion of the debate. These up-to-the-minute reports, provided by the Parliamentary Reporting Office, are meant to contribute to bridging the "gap" between Parliament and the general public. Public interest in these reports turned out to be overwhelming: during the period stretching from 1 April until 25 June as many as 42.000 visitors of the House's website clicked on the link to these reports.