Hon. Tara K. Carter is the Speaker of the Anguilla House of Assembly and was appointed on 11 March 2025. She is a distinguished barrister and solicitor.
Anguilla’s parliamentary history began with the 1976 Constitution, which established the first Legislature where laws were made with the advice and consent of the Assembly. This year, Anguilla’s House of Assembly celebrates its 50th Anniversary of Parliamentary Democracy.
In July 2025, the Administration Committee of the Anguilla House of Assembly successfully applied for a grant from the Commonwealth Parliamentarians with Disabilities (CPwD) network to fund the development of its website: www.houseofassembly.ai, which was developed by the Anguillan company Design Elements (www. digitalelements.ai).
The new website ensures that constituents with visual, auditory or other disabilities can access information about their Parliament’s work with the same ease as any other citizen. In a small community like Anguilla, where personal relationships matter deeply, it was particularly important that its digital presence reflected its commitment to inclusion.
Anguilla’s commitment to continuous improvement was reinforced by its participation in the CPA’s Benchmarks for Democratic Legislatures assessment in February 2020. This comprehensive review of its parliamentary practices identified areas where it excelled and, more importantly, highlighted opportunities for development. The assessment report’s recommendations on transparency, accessibility and the need for better record-keeping resonated strongly with its aspirations for the House of Assembly. One particularly pressing recommendation concerned the considerable backlog in producing official records of parliamentary debates. This challenge became a catalyst for innovation.
Building on this foundation, the Anguilla House of Assembly took an even bolder step and engaged the services of another local company, Evoluut AI (www.whosaidwhat.ai), to develop and implement an AI-driven transcription platform, known as the Hansard AI Together with the audio recording services of For The Record – FTR (www. fortherecord.com), the Hansard system works in real-time. As debates unfold on the floor of the House, audio is captured and immediately transcribed. An editor/ transcriptionist receives this live feed on their platform, allowing for verification and quality control even as the words are being spoken. Simultaneously, every Member of the House of Assembly has viewer access to the transcription on their own devices, enabling them to follow the debate with unprecedented clarity.
Most remarkably, the AI platform automatically generates the Hansard format transcript immediately upon conclusion of proceedings. What once took days or even weeks can now be accomplished in hours, providing constituents with rapid access to the official record of their Parliament’s work.
This innovation carries particular significance for Anguilla on two fronts. First, Anguilla is known as the birthplace of the .ai internet domain. While many around the world now recognize .ai as synonymous with Artificial Intelligence, it was originally, and remains, the Country Code Top-Level Domain for Anguilla. Anguilla’s implementation of sophisticated AI technology in its Parliament demonstrates that Anguilla is not merely the custodian of a valuable digital asset, but an active participant in the technological revolution it represents.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, this system advances the core values that must underpin any healthy democracy: accountability, transparency and fairness. When citizens can access the record of parliamentary debates immediately, when Members can review their own contributions and those of their colleagues in real-time, and when the process of creating the official record is both rapid and reliable, democracy is strengthened.
In December 2025, the Anguilla House of Assembly was honoured to host a formal launch of this innovative system, attended by CPA Secretary-General, Stephen Twigg and former CPA Head of Programmes, Matthew Salik. Their presence underscored the significance of this achievement not just for Anguilla, but as a potential model for other small Legislatures facing similar challenges. The launch represented the culmination of Anguilla’s efforts to address the recommendations of the benchmarks assessment while positioning Anguilla at the forefront of parliamentary innovation.
For small Parliaments like Anguilla that operate under resource limitations, the AI transcription system addresses a practical challenge. With limited staff managing multiple competing demands, traditional manual transcription had created significant backlogs that undermined transparency and accountability. The new system has proven effective: a single transcriptionist can now produce in hours what previously took weeks, while retaining essential human oversight for accuracy and parliamentary conventions.
Anguilla was honoured to share its experience at the CPA UK Post-Election Seminar in Bermuda from 26 to 28 January 2026. The session on exploring the use of AI and technology in Parliaments provided an excellent forum for exchanging ideas with colleagues from across the Commonwealth, including representatives from Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey and the Isle of Man. The Anguilla delegation included the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Tara K. Carter and the Clerk, Mr. Lenox Proctor, who both made presentations on the advancements in Anguilla.
The Anguilla House of Assembly’s journey does not end with this achievement. In November 2025, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association co-hosted, with the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UNDP, a landmark conference in Malaysia on ‘The Role of Parliament in Shaping the Future of Responsible AI’. The resulting Kuala Lumpur Declaration provides a comprehensive framework for parliamentary action on AI, with thirteen specific recommendations covering everything from AI readiness assessments to the establishment of oversight mechanisms and the promotion of responsible AI use within Parliaments.
The Administration Committee in Anguilla’s Legislature is committed to conducting regular assessments of the AI transcription system while ensuring clear ethical boundaries and governance. The recommendations from both the CPA Democratic Benchmarks assessment and the Kuala Lumpur Declaration will guide Anguilla’s ongoing work to ensure that its use of AI remains responsible, transparent and firmly in service of democratic values.
The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association has been instrumental in supporting this development, both through direct funding and through the networks and knowledge-sharing it facilitates. Anguilla encourages other Parliaments to embrace new tools to advance technology in the parliamentary process.
Anguilla’s Parliament is small, but it continues to advocate for transparency, accessibility and effective democracy with the same fervor as any large Parliament in the Commonwealth. Through the combination of CPA support, Government of Anguilla investment, local innovation and a commitment to its values, Anguilla has proven that size need not limit impact.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Tara K. Carter, Speaker of the Anguilla House of Assembly, and originally published in The Parliamentarian, the journal of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. The publication has served Commonwealth parliaments and parliamentary professionals for more than 100 years. The article highlights Anguilla’s advancements in parliamentary accessibility and innovation through technology and artificial intelligence. It is reproduced here in full with permission of the author.
Written by: Honourable Tara K. Carter, Speaker of the House, Anguilla