ParliamentSampo - Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo)

Project Idea

ParliamentSampo is a linked open data research infrastructure of Finnish parliamentary data based on some million speeches extracted from the minutes of the plenary sessions of the Parliament of Finland (PoF). This data was interlinked with an ontology of actors, organizations, and events of the PoF that was created in a data-driven fashion from open databases of the PoF, the Government, and enriched using Wikidata and the BiographySampo system. ParliamentSampo was developed at the Aalto University and University of Helsinki (HELDIG Centre for Digital Humanities) using novel semantic computing technologies to study parliamentary politics and political culture. Developing ParliamentSampo was part of the Semantic Parliament consortium research project, funded by the Academy of Finland in 2020-2022 as part of the DIGIHUM 2020-2022 programme on Digital Humanities. The project brought together researchers at the University of Helsinki, Aalto University, and University of Turku, Center for Parliamentary Studies, with complementary, multi-disciplinary expertise in language technology, semantic computing and web technologies, and political and media research, respectively.

The video below gives an introduction to the Semantic Parliament project as well as the ParliamentSampo system.

hyvonen-parliamentsampo-2021-03-04 from SeCo Research Group on Vimeo.

The other video gives an introduction to the Members of Parliament Knowledge Graph and Data Service.

Members of Parliament in Finland, Knowledge Graph and its Linked Open Data Service from SeCo Research Group on Vimeo.

Results of the Project

Results of the project were presented at the Final Seminar of the DIGIHUM Program on Nov 10, 2022, as overviewed in the video presentation below:

ParliamentSampo datasets, data servises, and the in-use portal Parlamenttisampo.fi were officially published on February 14, 2023, at this seminar.

The key ideas and major features of ParliamentSampo are presented in this paper of the DiPaDa 2022 conference. A more technical description about the ParliamentSampo infrastructure and its parts can be found in this article. More information about this project is available at the Finnish homepage and in the publications below.

How to Refer to the ParliamentSampo system

The most comprehensive presentation of the ParliamentSampo system as a whole is this paper: Eero Hyvönen, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Senka Drobac, Rafael Leal, Matti La Mela, Jouni Tuominen, Henna Poikkimäki and Heikki Rantala: Publishing and Using Parliamentary Linked Data on the Semantic Web: ParliamentSampo System for Parliament of Finland. Semantic Web, January, 2024. In open review. pdf

The papers below focus on different parts and aspects of the system in more detail.

Contact Persons and Collaborators

Professor Eero Hyvönen, University of Helsinki (HELDIG) and Aalto University. Project consortium leader and the Principal Investigator (PI) at the University of Helsinki (HELDIG).
Staff Scientist, Dr. Jouni Tuominen, Aalto University and HELDIG. PI at Aalto University.
Adjunct Professor Kimmo Elo, University of Turku, Centre for Parliamentaty Studies. PI at the University of Turku.

The project steering committee includes, in addition to the PIs above, Matti La Mela (Aalto), Ari Apilo (Parliament of Finland), Sari Wilenius (Parliament of Finland) ja Aki Hietanen (Ministry of Justice). The project also has an Intenational Advisory Board: Dr. Laura Hollink (CWI, Centrum Wikunde & Informatica, Amsterdam), Prof. Bruno Martins (University of Lisbon), and Prof. Andra Siibak (University of Tartu, Estonia, Institute of Social Studies).

Publications

2025

Eero Hyvönen, Annastiina Ahola, Petri Leskinen and Jouni Tuominen: Aggregating and Aligning Knowledge Graphs into a Global Service: SampoSampo System for Cross-cultural Data Search, Exploration, and Analysis. 2025. Abstract, submitted for peer review. bib pdf

Eero Hyvönen, Petri Leskinen, Henna Poikkimäki, Heikki Rantala, Jouni Tuominen, Senka Drobac, Ossi Koho, Ilona Pikkanen and Hanna-Leena Paloposki: Searching, exploring, and analyzing historical letters and the underlying networks: LetterSampo Finland (1809–1917) data service and semantic portal. 2025. Abstract, submitted for peer review. bib pdf

2024

Eero Hyvönen, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Senka Drobac, Rafael Leal, Matti La Mela, Jouni Tuominen, Henna Poikkimäki and Heikki Rantala: Publishing and Using Parliamentary Linked Data on the Semantic Web: ParliamentSampo System for Parliament of Finland. Semantic Web, October, 2024. In print. bib pdf

Henna Poikkimäki, Kati Katajisto, Petri Leskinen and Eero Hyvönen: Applying Network and Bibliometric Analyses to Mentions of Politicians in Plenary Speeches: Case ParliamentSampo - Parliament of Finland on the Semantic Web. July, 2024. Submitted for evaluation. bib pdf

Tomaž Erjavec, Matyáš Kopp, Nikola Ljubešić, Taja Kuzman, Paul Rayson, Petya Osenova, Maciej Ogrodniczuk, Çağrı Çöltekin, Danijel Koržinek, Katja Meden, Jure Skubic, Peter Rupnik, Tommaso Agnoloni, José Aires, Starkaður Barkarson, Roberto Bartolini, Núria Bel, María Calzada Pérez, Roberts Darģis, Sascha Diwersy, Maria Gavriilidou, Ruben van Heusden, Mikel Iruskieta, Neeme Kahusk, Anna Kryvenko, Noémi Ligeti-Nagy, Carmen Magariños, Martin Mölder, Costanza Navarretta, Kiril Simov, Lars Magne Tungland, Jouni Tuominen, John Vidler, Adina Ioana Vladu, Tanja Wissik, Väinö Yrjänäinen and and Darja Fišer: ParlaMint II: Advancing Comparable Parliamentary Corpora Across Europe. March, 2024. Submitted. bib link

Eero Hyvönen: How to Create a National Cross-domain Ontology and Linked Data Infrastructure and Use It on the Semantic Web. Semantic Web - Interoperability, Usability, Applicability, IOS Press, 2024. DOI: 10.3233/SW-243468. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen: Sampo-järjestelmien verkosto avaa linkitettyä kulttuuridataa tutkijoille ja kansalaisille semanttisessa webissä. Tieteessä tapahtuu, no. 2, 2024. bib pdf

2023

Eero Hyvönen: Parlamenttisampo avaa eduskunnan miljoona puhetta ja kansanedustajien verkostot kaikkien tutkittaviksi. Tieteessä tapahtuu, vol. 41, no. 1, Tieteellisten seurain valtuuskunta (TSV), 2023. bib pdf link

Senka Drobac, Laura Sinikallio and Eero Hyvönen: An OCR Pipeline for Transforming Parliamentary Debates into Linked Data: Case ParliamentSampo – Parliament of Finland on the Semantic Web. Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Publication, DHNB2023 Conference Proceedings, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 287-296, University of Oslo Library, Norway, 2023. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen, Petri Leskinen and Jouni Tuominen: A Data-driven Approach to Create an Ontology of Parliamentary Work: Case Parliament of Finland on the Semantic Web. Proceedings of SWODCH 2023. Semantic Web and Ontology Design for Cultural Heritage. Co-located with the 22nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2023) in Athens, Greece, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol-3540, November, 2023. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Senka Drobac, Rafael Leal, Matti La Mela, Jouni Tuominen, Henna Poikkimäki and Heikki Rantala: Plenary Speeches of the Parliament of Finland as Linked Open Data and Data Services. Joint Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Knowledge Graph Generation From Text and the First International BiKE Challenge co-located with 20th Extended Semantic Conference (ESWC 2023), pp. 1-20, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 3447, August, 2023. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen, Petri Leskinen and Heikki Rantala: Integrating Faceted Search with Data Analytic Tools in the User Interface of ParliamentSampo - Parliament of Finland on the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web: ESWC 2023 Satellite Events, pp. 16-21, Sringer-Verlag, June, 2023. bib pdf

Eero Hyvönen: Creating and Using a National Linked Open Data Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage Applications and Digital Humanities Research: Lessons Learned. DARIAH Annual Event 2023, Budapest, Hungary, abstracts of papers, DARIAH-EU, June, 2023. bib link

Eero Hyvönen: Creating and Using a Linked Open Ontology and Data Infrastructure for Digital Humanities in Finland: Lessons Learned 2003-2023. June, 2023. Under review. bib pdf

Eero Hyvönen: How to Create a National Cross-domain Ontology and Linked Data Infrastructure and Use It on the Semantic Web. Programming and Data Infrastructure in Digital Humanities, Book of Abstracts, pp. 7, High Performance Computing Centre, University of Évora, Portugal, March, 2023. bib link

Minna Tamper, Laura Sinikallio, Jouni Tuominen and Eero Hyvönen: Transforming Linguistically Annotated Finnish Parliamentary Debates Into the Parla-CLARIN Format. Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Seventh Conference (DHNB 2023), Book of Abstracts (Sofie Gilbert and Annika Rockenberger (eds.)), pp. 118, University of Oslo Library, Oslo, Norway, March, 2023. bib link

Eero Hyvönen, Petri Leskinen, Laura Sinikallio, Senka Drobac, Rafael Leal, Matti La Mela, Jouni Tuominen, Henna Poikkimäki and Heikki Rantala: ParliamentSampo Infrastructure for Publishing the Plenary Speeches and Networks of Politicians of the Parliament of Finland as Open Data Services. Aalto University, Dept. of Computer Science, February, 2023. Paper published at the publication event of the ParliamentSampo data service and portal. bib pdf

Eero Hyvönen: Digital Humanities on the Semantic Web: Sampo Model and Portal Series. Semantic Web – Interoperability, Usability, Applicability, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 729-744, IOS Press, 2023. bib pdf link

2022

Henna Poikkimäki, Petri Leskinen, Minna Tamper and Eero Hyvönen: Analyses of Networks of Politicians Based on Linked Data: Case ParliamentSampo - Parliament of Finland on the Semantic Web. New Trends in Database and Information Systems, pp. 585-592, Springer International Publishing, August, 2022. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Matti La Mela, Jouni Tuominen, Kimmo Elo, Senka Drobac, Mikko Koho, Esko Ikkala, Minna Tamper, Rafael Leal and Joonas Kesäniemi: Linked Data Approach for Studying Parliamentary Speeches and Networks of Politicians in Finland 1907-2021 (long paper). Digital Humanities 2022, Conference Abstracts, July 25-29, 2022 Online, Tokyo. Japan, University of Tokyo, pp. 254-257, ADHO, July, 2022. bib link

Minna Tamper, Rafael Leal, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Jouni Tuominen and Eero Hyvönen: Extracting Knowledge from Parliamentary Debates for Studying Political Culture and Language. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Knowledge Graph Generation From Text and the 1st International Workshop on Modular Knowledge co-located with 19th Extended Semantic Conference (ESWC 2022) (Sanju Tiwari, Nandana Mihindukulasooriya, Francesco Osborne, Dimitris Kontokostas, Jennifer D’Souza and Mayank Kejriwal (eds.)), vol. 3184, pp. 70-79, CEUR WS, May, 2022. International Workshop on Knowledge Graph Generation from Text (TEXT2KG 2022). bib pdf link

Matti La Mela, Fredrik Norén and Eero Hyvönen: Digital Parliamentary Data in Action (DiPaDA 2022): Introduction. Proceedings of the Digital Parliamentary Data in Action (DiPaDA 2022) Workshop, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 3133, May, 2022. bib pdf link

Matti La Mela, Fredrik Norén and Eero Hyvönen (eds.): Proceedings of the Digital Parliamentary Data in Action (DiPaDA 2022) Workshop. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 3133, May, 2022. bib link

Eero Hyvönen, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Matti La Mela, Jouni Tuominen, Kimmo Elo, Senka Drobac, Mikko Koho, Esko Ikkala, Minna Tamper, Rafael Leal and Joonas Kesäniemi: Finnish Parliament on the Semantic Web: Using ParliamentSampo Data Service and Semantic Portal for Studying Political Culture and Language. Digital Parliamentary data in Action (DiPaDA 2022), Workshop at the 6th Digital Humanities in Nordic and Baltic Countries Conference, long paper, pp. 69-85, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 3133, May, 2022. bib pdf link

Laura Sinikallio: Eduskunnan täysistuntojen pöytäkirjojen muuntaminen semanttiseksi dataksi ja julkaiseminen verkkopalveluna (Transformation of the Debates of the Parliament of Finland into Semantic Data and a Data Service. (in Finnish), University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, February, 2022. MSc Thesis. bib pdf link

Esko Ikkala, Eero Hyvönen, Heikki Rantala and Mikko Koho: Sampo-UI: A Full Stack JavaScript Framework for Developing Semantic Portal User Interfaces. Semantic Web – Interoperability, Usability, Applicability, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 69-84, January, 2022. Online version published in 2021, print version in 2022. bib pdf link

2021

Eero Hyvönen, Laura Sinikallio, Petri Leskinen, Senka Drobac, Jouni Tuominen, Kimmo Elo, Matti La Mela, Mikko Koho, Esko Ikkala, Minna Tamper, Rafael Leal and Joonas Kesäniemi: Parlamenttisampo: eduskunnan aineistojen linkitetyn avoimen datan palvelu ja sen käyttömahdollisuudet. Informaatiotutkimus, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 216-244, November, 2021. bib pdf link

Petri Leskinen, Eero Hyvönen and Jouni Tuominen: Sparql2GraphServer: a Server-side Tool for Extracting Networks from Linked Data for Data Analysis. ISWC-Posters-Demos-Industry 2021 International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2021: Posters, Demos, and Industry Tracks, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Oct, 2021. bib pdf link

Laura Sinikallio, Senka Drobac, Minna Tamper, Rafael Leal, Mikko Koho, Jouni Tuominen, Matti La Mela and Eero Hyvönen: Plenary Debates of the Parliament of Finland as Linked Open Data and in Parla-CLARIN Markup. 3rd Conference on Language, Data and Knowledge, LDK 2021, Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), vol. 93, pp. 8:1-8:17, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik GmbH, Zaragoza, Spain, August, 2021. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen: Sammon taontaa semanttisessa webissä (Forging Sampos on the Semantic Web). Tekniikan Waiheita, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 87-105, Tekniikan Historian Seura ry, July, 2021. bib pdf link

Petri Leskinen, Eero Hyvönen and Jouni Tuominen: Members of Parliament in Finland Knowledge Graph and Its Linked Open Data Service. Further with Knowledge Graphs. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Semantic Systems, 6-9 September 2021, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 255-269, IOS Press, 2021. bib pdf link

2020

Eero Hyvönen: Semantic Sampo Portals for Digital Humanities Based on a National Linked Open Data Infrastructure. 2020. White paper, Aalto University, Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo). bib pdf

Matti La Mela: Tracing the Emergence of Nordic Allemansrätten through Digitised Parliamentary Sources. Digital histories: Emergent approaches within the new digital history (Fridlund, Mats, Oiva, Mila and Paju, Petri (eds.)), pp. 181-197, Helsinki University Press, 2020. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen: Sampo Model and Semantic Portals for Digital Humanities on the Semantic Web. DHN 2020 Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 5th Conference, pp. 373-378, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2612, Riga, Latvia, October, 2020. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen: Linked Open Data Infrastructure for Digital Humanities in Finland. DHN 2020 Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 5th Conference, pp. 254-259, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2612, Riga, Latvia, October, 2020. bib pdf link

Kimmo Kettunen and Matti La Mela: Digging Deeper into the Finnish Parliamentary Protocols – Using a Lexical Semantic Tagger for Studying Meaning Change of Everyman’s Rights (allemansrätten). DHN 2020 Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 5th Conference, pp. 63-80, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2612, Riga, Latvia, October, 2020. bib pdf link

Eero Hyvönen: Building and Using a National Linked Open Data Infrastructure for Digital Humanities: The Finnish Approach. Proceedings of the conferenve: Data for History 2020. Modelling Time, Places, Agents, Berlin, 2020. Accepted, conference postponed to 2021. bib pdf link