Automatic Summarisation of Zambian Legislative Documents

The objective of this study was to examine the obstacles individuals face when attempting to comprehend legislative documents, specifically acts of parliament. In addition, our aim was to devise and assess a model capable of generating concise summaries of these extensive documents. The National Assembly of Zambia is steadfast in its commitment to enhancing public perception and understanding of their institution by ensuring transparency and facilitating accessibility to parliamentary proceedings. This effort is supported by the strengthening of ICT platforms to encourage public engagement. However, comprehending the legislation made available through entities like the Zambia Legal Information Institute (ZambiaLII) proves challenging due to the extensive size of the documents and the intricate vocabulary employed. Acknowledging the potential of Language Processing (NLP) techniques and enhanced accessibility, this study endeavours to tackle this challenge by developing software tools that automate the summarization of legislative documents, with a specific focus on Acts of parliament. Our approach entails harnessing text mining and designing user-friendly tools to effectively achieve this objective.