A Research Platform for Data-Driven Democracy Studies in Switzerland -DemocraSci

Problem:

Lack of easily accessible, structured data for data science applications in political science, despite availability of (scanned) historic documents on parliamentary processes in the Swiss National Archive

Solution:

Develop scalable and reusable document processing and analysis chain for parliamentary proceedings of the last 125 years:

1. Automated analysis and annotation of document structure and contents
2. Generation of knowledge graph linking political actors, parties, votes, etc.
3. Provide data analysis and visualisation tools for political scientists

Impact:

1. A new data basis for computational social science and Swiss parliamentary research
2. A reusable document processing chain for the humanities and the social sciences