This is the second in a series of four posts written with the head of the Brazilian Senate's e-Citizenship Office about how the Brazilian Senate is—and hopes to expand—using artificial intelligence to enable greater citizen engagement in lawmaking. The first post about the Legislative Idea describes how Brazilians can propose laws. Today we look at public participation in Senate hearings.
Part 2: The Interactive Event: Using AI to Improve Citizen Engagement in Legislative Hearings
Part 3: Legislative Workshops: Using AI to Strengthen Youth Engagement
Part 4: Brazil’s Online Consultation System is Reimagining Democracy for the Digital Age
Unlike in-person attendees who must remain silent in the Senate gallery, Brazilian citizens can actively participate in committee hearings through the e-Citizenship portal or a toll-free hotline. In 2024 alone, the public submitted 69,000 questions across 440 committee hearings. Senators read or responded to 90% of these questions.
The e-Citizenship team selects and relays the most relevant citizen questions to committee chairs. The process has become so integral that Senators now expect these public inputs—as one staff member notes, “If we are late, which is rare, the Senator asks, 'where's the list of questions?' Public comments have become the rule, rather than the exception.”
In 2024 alone, the public submitted 69,000 questions across 440 committee hearings. Senators read or responded to 90% of these questions.
Challenges and Limitations
Despite its success, the Interactive Event faces significant challenges. Processing tens of thousands of questions requires substantial staff resources. Ensuring selected questions are relevant, constructive, and representative of diverse viewpoints requires careful curation. The current manual process may not always capture the most impactful or pertinent questions. Additionally, staff must maintain parliamentary decorum by filtering inappropriate content.
Despite efforts to notify a wide range of potentially interested parties, there's a risk that certain demographics or interest groups may be overrepresented in the question pool, potentially skewing the focus of hearings.
Example of a March 2025 Interactive Event for a Senate hearing on proposed changes to the federal income tax filing process.
Upgrading the Interactive Event with AI
AI is already beginning to transform the hearing process. The e-Citizenship team currently uses AI to select the best and most relevant questions from citizens, but the technology offers far more potential. The team is turning to generative AI to write brief summaries of events to help the public understand the topics of congressional hearings.
For example, NotebookLM, a free tool from Google, creates podcasts from documents. While currently available only in English, a Portuguese version could generate conversational discussions of upcoming hearings, making complex topics more accessible to average citizens.
With text-to-video and audio capabilities, AI could transform written backgrounders into short videos, slide decks, or podcasts, making information more intelligible to those without policy backgrounds. For example, NotebookLM, a free tool from Google, creates podcasts from documents. While currently available only in English, a Portuguese version could generate conversational discussions of upcoming hearings, making complex topics more accessible to average citizens.
Currently, submissions are only accepted in Portuguese. In the future, AI translation could accommodate questions in other languages and handle transcription and organization of voice or video submissions. These content sorting tools would reduce staff workload, route queries to the appropriate committee chairs more efficiently, and ensure diverse topics are addressed during hearings.
For citizens, AI-powered chatbots could help navigate the process of submitting questions, understanding hearing procedures, and accessing information about discussion topics. This would lower barriers to participation, especially for first-time users or those less familiar with legislative processes.
Integrating AI-driven transcription into committee meetings could further enhance efficiency. By transcribing discussions in real-time, AI could compare these transcripts with submitted questions to identify whether certain topics have already been addressed and suggest which citizen the Senator should recognize next. The system could also recommend follow-up questions that logically extend the current discussion, ensuring more coherent and productive dialogue. This would streamline moderation and maintain hearing flow, enabling Senators to focus on relevant and timely queries.
AI could play a critical role in parliamentary committee engagements by moderating citizen interactions during public hearings and consultations. Beyond simply filtering inappropriate content, AI tools could organize citizen questions to ensure the most relevant and constructive issues are addressed while maintaining focused discussion. AI-powered transcription could compare citizen inputs across sessions, preventing repetitive discussions and highlighting unresolved topics. Instead of simple yes/no votes, AI could facilitate online deliberation forums where citizens discuss bills in real-time, with the system analyzing these discussions to provide lawmakers with nuanced insights into public sentiment, concerns, and suggestions.
The e-Citizenship team has already experimented with using AI to generate comprehensive reports summarizing hearings and plans to make this a standard practice. These reports would provide valuable records for both Senators and the public in understanding hearing outcomes and impacts.
Early experiments with immersive virtual worlds have been attempted but haven't persisted due to the expense and distraction of headsets and goggles. As technology evolves to become more accessible, AI could create virtual environments for hearings, allowing citizens to feel present and engaged when participating remotely. Instead of typing a question and watching on YouTube, participants could experience being in the virtual gallery.
By leveraging these AI-driven enhancements, the Brazilian Senate could significantly improve the efficiency, accessibility, and effectiveness of the Interactive Event process, fostering even greater public participation in the democratic process.
The next post will discuss the Senate’s civic education initiative, and how AI could enable more widespread and impactful outreach to youth.
