With the recent adoption of the Artificial Intelligence Act, public administrations at all levels will increasingly need to invest resources into the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), enabling them to provide public services to citizens more effectively and efficiently. Contrary to the commonly held opinion, evidence has shown that the use of AI in the EU public sector is not lagging behind its use in other sectors. In addition, the use of generative and predictive AI has increased throughout 2023. Since Open AI launched their large language model Chat GPT at the end of 2022, the general public has become aware of the practical use of AI, leading to an AI boom which has by now made AI central to the digital transformation of society, and an EU priority.
In order to contribute to the central discourse on the use of AI by public administrations at subnational level, the European Committee of the Regions and its Commission for Economic Policy organized a conference hosted by the city of Tampere, Finland, on October 25, 2024, entitled “Digital transformation as a changemaker for cities, companies and local and regional economy”. It aimed to examine EU actions to boost the use of AI by cities and regions. The conference also seeked to facilitate linking up engaged cities and regions and offer recommendations on how politicians and practitioners could pool resources to propel the integration of AI across EU cities and regions.
Four early adopter cities and regions were invited to showcase inspiring initiatives supporting the adoption and rolling out of AI in public administrations at local level – Sofia, Munich, Tampere and the Galicia region. Sevdalina Voynova presented the experience of Sofia Municipality as a forerunner in using AI for on-demand public transport, allowing to bridge the widening digital gap in AI use. The pilot was designed and implemented in the framework of INNOAIR project, funded by the Urban Innovative Action initiative.
The experience and lessons learned from the showcased cities and regions added to the Committee of the Regions opinion on Challenges and Opportunities of AI in thePublic Sector: Defining the role of regional and local authorities.
