ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: BEYOND CONTEMPORARY PARLIAMENTARY PRACTICE

Unfolding the institutional potential of Artificial Intelligence.

Parliaments can, with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), be less like mysterious black box institutions. In reality, they constitute complex rule-based organisations that perform a variety of institutional functions, influenced by a wide range of parameters such as people, culture, structure and processes. Moreover, Parliaments generate and process enormous amounts of data. Some of these are publicly accessible, many are not. In principle, they constitute large knowledge and legal data hubs among governance institutions.

Only recently have parliamentary stakeholders begun to understand that these data volumes need to be made more usable, both for Parliamentarians and the public. As a matter of fact, the public engagement dimension in Parliaments relies on the existence of open data, as also pointed out at the Global Parliament Report 2022 However, open, structured and validated legal data is not generated by chance or miracle but constitutes the product of specific digital frameworks, which may include several components such as a (digital) strategy, relevant operations, the necessary technology and transformation processes. Once parliamentary data becomes available, it can be further aggregated, processed and studied to create added value for the relevant stakeholders, within and outside the premises of Parliament. Here is where AI comes into play.

A partnership gains momentum

While not new as a concept, AI has found its way in recent years into mainstream applications. This provoked mind-bending questions among scientists regarding its ability to support Parliaments in performing their respective functions in more transparent, accountable and efficient ways. At this point, one should bear in mind that, firstly, AI is not a single technology and, secondly, that there are multiple potential applications of these technologies in

In order to provide answers to these (and more) prolific questions, an international cooperation was developed in late 2022 between two research organisations that excel in administrative science and legal informatics. One of them, the Hellenic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Team, is based in Greece. Better known as the Hellenic OCR Team, it was identified as an innovative practice by the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Centre for Innovation in Parliament and takes the form of a decentralised research network that specialises in the processing and study of parliamentary data. The other one, The Open Government Institute (TOGI) at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, is based Germany and specialises in opening up administrative data and using smart technologies.

TOGI will cooperate with the Hellenic OCR Team to access specialised, distributed parliamentary know-how from a wide network of academic institutions, companies and researchers that spans across 13 countries on 4 continents. Vice versa, the Hellenic OCR Team will be able to make use of TOGI’s advanced analytical capabilities in the area of e-government and open government. Standing side-by-side both organisations will be able to jointly tackle the emerging challenges in legal and administrative informatics. This includes, not least, considering the entire life cycle of AI-based solutions in Legislatures without neglecting the ethical aspects. To their preliminary research goals belong, for instance, the addressing of problems arising from the public (in)accessibility of parliamentary data and the possibility of improving it through the use of new digital tools and services. This cooperation is an open one, which means that its scientific outcomes will be published and that additional actors can join at any time. Furthermore, at the technical scale, it includes the promotion and study of open parliamentary data and the

Exploratory workshops

A tangible outcome of this partnership has been showcased by conducting a couple of workshops in national Parliaments to gather empirical evidence for the future use of AI in the parliamentary workspace. The first one was implemented in April 2021 at the Hellenic Parliament, while the next was held in August 2022 at the Honorable Cámara de Diputados de la Nación Argentina (Honourable Chamber of Deputies of Argentina). These exploratory workshops are innovative experimental setups that rely on an original research scheme jointly developed by Zeppelin University and the Hellenic OCR Team researchers.

Members of Parliament, parliamentary employees and practitioners evaluate 210 AI-based technology proposals related to specific parliamentary competencies in terms of their priority and relevance for application in the respective parliamentary workspace. The proposals are classified in typical parliamentary thematic areas that, among others, include legislation, parliamentary control and diplomacy, parliamentary administration, research services and education. The analysis of such datasets offers significant insights for the prioritisation of disruptive technologies and the clustering of information needs. With the help of this analysis, digital strategies can be developed, and Parliaments can prepare for future institutional challenges. Early results were presented at specialised conferences in Wroxton, UK and Linköping, Sweden.

Parliaments of the Commonwealth are urged to consider the challenges related with the interaction of advanced algorithms and invited to organise similar exploratory workshops. The Legislatures that go through this process will not only gain early access to state of-the-art AI technology and know-how, but also insights about its institutional application. Those, in turn, can be used in the development of in-house tools and solutions or the adaptation of open source ones into existing e-Parliament systems. Though the national dimension has been prioritised, there are also discussions about expanding the methodology to sub-national representative institutions.

Artificial Intelligence as game changer

An interesting dynamic regarding the broader use of AI developed following 30 November 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT, a powerful chatbot that relies on a language processing model called Generative Pretrained Transformer (GPT). The ChatGPT service reached one million users within only five days, showing a hugely impressive dissemination potential. Preliminary assessment seems to prove its characterisation as a ‘game changer for Parliament’, as over 80% of the 210 technology proposals mentioned above could be largely taken over by AI systems, according to an expert survey. Such systems still operate under the supervision of experts. Human intelligence should continue to be used to check their output for validity, plausibility and ethical aspects.

Nonetheless, one should be aware of the constant evolution of AI-based systems. ChatGPT is not the only such system available. There are many alternatives to it, vying for technological superiority and maybe striving for the so-called ‘technological singularity’, the point at which technology aims to surpass (general) human intelligence. It remains debatable whether this is a hypothetical future scenario or not. All the parliamentary community can do for the moment is to prepare for the present and future challenges that are related with the introduction of AI in the institutional workspace of Parliaments. The partnership that was described above can provide support to individual Parliaments or groups of Parliaments to assess their capacities, train their legislators and professionals, and help them develop strategies for resilient future-proof institutions.

Background

• ‘The Open Government Institute’ (TOGI) is an institute of the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, under the direction of Professor Dr Jörn von Lucke. It deals with administrative data and citizen participation processes and has a thematic focus on open government. Find out more at: www.zeppelin-university.com/institutes/togi/

• The Hellenic OCR Team is a decentralised crowdsourcing platform from Greece with members in Europe, North America, South America and Asia. It deals with the recognition, processing and analysis of parliamentary and governance data. Find out more at: https://hellenicocrteam.gr

Dr Fotis Fitsilis has over 20 years of professional experience in science positions within both the private and the public sector. Since 2008, Dr Fitsilis has been the Head of Department for Scientific Documentation and Supervision at the Scientific Service of the Hellenic Parliament. He has been visiting professor for parliamentary procedures and legislative drafting at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. In 2017, he founded the Hellenic OCR Team, a crowdsourcing initiative for the study of parliamentary data. Contact email: fitsilisf@parliament.gr the parliamentary workspace. Hence, where to start and which parliamentary sectors, technologies and fields of application to study?

Professor Dr Jörn von Lucke is Professor and Chair for public sector informatics and business informatics as well as director of The Open Government Institute at the Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany. He was the founding director of the Deutsche Telekom Institute for Connected Cities. His current fields of research are E-Government, Open Government Data, Open Societal Innovation, Portals & One-Stop Government, Smart Government, CPS and IoT in the public sector as well as Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector. Contact email: joern.vonlucke@zu.de development of electronic tools and services for parliamentary and government systems. Thus, the cooperation provides an important foundation for conducting studies, building capacity and providing technical and scientific support for advanced research efforts.