Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in Public Administration

As part of the Innovation Roadmap, the FCT is promoting a Call for projects that aims to support the development of partnerships between public administration and R&D institutions so that, together, they can build new ways of processing public data to produce knowledge that is relevant to society, using advanced artificial intelligence and data science techniques. This is the first of three annual Calls with an overall budget of €10 million. The Notice of the Call for the first Call is available here and applications will be submitted from March 15 to April 30. This action is part of Axis 5 - Research of the National Digital Competences Initiative e.2030 (Portugal INCoDe.2030).

Every year, in order to provide services to citizens, the Public Administration collects millions of pieces of administrative data. Although this data supports the purpose for which it is requested, its value goes far beyond that use. When processed, this data has the potential to inform decision-making, optimize resources, improve public policies and ultimately contribute to improving people's lives.

Advances in computing techniques and artificial intelligence make it possible to analyze different sets of micro-data in increasingly complex ways, combining them in new ways to extract knowledge that was previously inaccessible. The scientific community is thus becoming essential to developing a public administration model based on advanced analysis methods that allow the full potential of existing data to be harnessed.

In addition to the Call, to stimulate data science in the Public Administration, a set of four projects identified in an integrated manner by the Offices of the Minister for the Presidency and Administrative Modernization and the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education, in close collaboration with the coordination of the Portugal INCoDe.2030 Initiative, the Agency for Administrative Modernization (AMA) and the FCT, are already being promoted. These partnerships will be funded for 18 months, with a total financial envelope of 500,000 euros. They are:

Project 1: Analysis of antibiotic prescription patterns (partnership between the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health, SPMS, and the Gulbenkian Institute of Science)

This project aims to prevent the excessive and inappropriate prescription of antibiotics, which represents a threat and a public health problem. Based on the digital transformation that is taking place in the prescription of medicines and health products, namely through Paperless Prescription, the aim is to deepen the analysis of antibiotic prescription patterns using electronic medical prescription data.

 Project 2: Assessing the risk of long-term unemployment (partnership between the Institute for Employment and Vocational Training, IEFP, and NOVA SBE)

The project aims to deepen the analysis of the records of the Institute of Employment and Vocational Training, IEFP, in order to detect early the risk of long-term unemployment and to identify gaps in the skills of unemployed profiles in relation to the labor market.

Project 3: Food and economic surveillance (partnership between the Food and Economic Safety Authority, ASAE, and the Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory, University of Porto, LIACC)

The aim of the project is to develop risk analysis models for selecting economic agents to monitor, based on the databases available and to be developed within the scope of this project. The risk analysis models should include simulating the behavior of different economic agents, including virtual agents (i.e. those with a presence on the internet). The aim is to use all the information available to improve prevention in the areas of food safety and economic surveillance.

Project 4: intelligent support for entrepreneurs (chatbots) (partnership between the Agency for Administrative Modernization, AMA, and the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra, CISUC)

The project aims to deepen and apply artificial intelligence and natural language processing techniques in the development of intelligent agents (chatbot) capable of answering questions and clarifying doubts of entrepreneurs within the scope of the Entrepreneur's Desk/Enterprise Space. This includes automatic support on start-up issues, licensing, support and funding, among others.