Court Reporting Changing As A Result of the Yucca Mountain Hearings
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COPYRIGHT HUSEBY, INC. 2008
Huseby offers the best opportunities possible to our staff of court reporters by staying on top of industry changes. We monitor changes
to state and federal judicial systems or evolving internet technologies to predict how they will affect the profession. Recently a major potential change has come from an unexpected source, the nation's nuclear waste industry.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Hearings on Yucca Mountain
The US government is planning a long-term nuclear waste repository in Nevada at Yucca Mountain. Like all nuclear facilities, it must be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after public hearings. Analysts predict the Yucca Mountain hearings will dwarf past proceedings, including up to 300 times the amount of evidence and testimony. The event will occur simultaneously in facilities 2,500 miles apart and include up to 100 participants at once plus countless observers.
To prepare for this historic event, the NRC developed a revolutionary information management system that may set the model for court reporting around the world. It will give web access to a database with over 40 million pages of information, adds capabilities such as live annotations of electronic documents during the hearings, plus offers live, captioned video of the event streamed over the web.
The Challenges of the NRC Digital Courtroom
The Yucca Mountain hearings will have participants in both Las Vegas, NV and Rockville, MD and all subjects must have simultaneous and equal access to documents and testimony. Remote witnesses will be able to participate from anywhere through telephone and video conferencing, sparing them the expense and inconvenience of travel.
While no classified information will be discussed during the hearings, much of the information will be sensitive. Security is always an issue on a public network, where administrators have to balance ease of access with information protection. Parts of the network will have higher security requirements and access to most of it will be allowed only to participants after several hours of training in security and system operation.
Change To The Court Reporting Industry
Huseby and our staff is interested in how this system will affect
court
reporters. Paul Bollwerk, a judge involved in the project, said in the October 2008 issue of Journal for the Reporting and Captioning Professions that court reporting was "an absolutely essential part of the design process" and the design team included a court reporting agency.
Based on the proceeding, the court reporting station can be moved to different parts of the courtroom. The station includes a live video feed with close-ups of the speaker, making it easier to accurately identify the person in a crowded venue. Copies of video records will be rushed to reporters after each session to ease transcript correction and preparation.
This new digital courtroom will be used for other NRC hearings and should change as they see what works and what doesn't. Huseby will watch with interest to see how the court reporting profession responds to these new technologies.
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