Greece’s online public services platform gov.gr launched its first artificial intelligence assistant, mAIgov.gr, which was presented by Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou on Tuesday.
Incorporated into the digital platform’s home page as an on-screen widget, the AI assistant operates as a helper that processes users’ queries and directs them to the appropriate section of gov.gr, which already features more than 1,607 different general services or the 3,270 administrative services of the National Registry of Administrative Procedures, the official register of procedures of the Greek Public Sector.
More than 4,500 queries were submitted to mAigov in the first two-and-a-half hours since it went live.
At a special event held on the day, officials described it as the Greek government’s first decisive step in its strategic plan to becoming a pioneering country in the study and application of artificial intelligence in the European Union, and also to be the first country to actually introduce proper generative artificial intelligence (Generative AI) in the public sector, putting the technology to the service of citizens.
The AI assistant “has arrived to provide even greater flexibility to gov.gr, and is expected to create a multiplier effect for both the Greek citizens and the public administration itself”, noted the minister.
Papastergiou spoke of a great challenge for both technology and humanity, but he noted that his comment “comes not from worry, but from sheer enthusiasm for the prospects presented to us by technology.”
The mΑΙgov capability “will, eventually, replace some of the ways that the state interacts with citizens”, Papastergiou pointed out.
Users who turn to gov.gr and specifically mAigov “should note that the more they use the AI service the more this is getting ‘trained’ “, adding that users should “simply just use it, work their way through it and judge for themselves if the answers it provides are correct.” This is just the beginning, he added, as the aim is to expand this AI capability with more applications.
Deputy Minister of Digital Governance Kyriakos Kyranakis noted that “we took on the challenge to provide something that will help citizens any time of the day and on any query.”
Calling it an actual tool “which will provide a constant, daily feedback,” Kyranakis said that it will “help us to make the state even better in its entirety.”
This is the first time that artificial intelligence is being put in use for carrying out public services, noted Dimosthenis Anagnostopoulos, the Digital Governance Ministry’s Secretary General for Information Systems of Public Administration. This specific application of AI is also a first in Europe, “as there is nothing like it in the European continent”, he noted.
Describing mAigov as the “next generation of people’s communication with the state”, Grigoris Christopoulos, OTE Chief Commercial Officer Business Segment, added that AI technology can practically improve people’s lives on a daily basis.
Greece is turning a page into the era of Artificial Intelligence, noted Microsoft CEO for Greece, Cyprus & Malta, Gianna Andronopoulou.
In terms of its hands-on usability, mAigov BETA can take all the anonymized queries (also stored in the system for 20 days) via a desktop computer/laptop or even a smartphone. It can handle 240 chats per minute in the Greek language.
The mAigov project’s implementation was financed with Recovery & Resilience Fund resources intended to boost the country’s digital transformation. They relate to a contract of the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance for cloud services and it is monitored by the Information Society – the executive support arm for the implementation of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) projects in the public sector.
The project’s contractor is OTE with subcontractors ‘Accenture’ and ‘UBITECH’ which carried out its implementation, while the technology provider is Microsoft with Azure Open AI technology.
The Greek state’s first chat bot was designed using cutting-edge technologies based on artificial intelligence and cloud computing models, implemented in accordance with the Microsoft Responsible AI Standard ensuring, among other things, transparency, equality and respect for user privacy and the protection of personal data (GDPR).
