Promoting greater municipal transparency and encouraging civic participation are the goals of the CitiLink project, coordinated by INESC TEC. The project leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simplify access to information about municipal decisions.
The main objective of CitiLink is to develop AI algorithms based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to interpret and summarise minutes from municipal meetings. Thanks to this technology, it will be possible to identify key events discussed, organise them by departments, and highlight the positions taken by each municipal councillor, making public information more accessible and transparent.
“Currently, municipal meeting minutes are lengthy and technical documents, often difficult for citizens to interpret. AI solutions can interpret, summarise and organise minutes more clearly, allowing faster access to information for citizens, journalists, and policymakers,” explained Ricardo Campos, researcher at INESC TEC and lecturer at UBI.
The project involves the municipal councils of Alandroal, Campo Maior, Covilhã, Fundão, Guimarães, and Porto – which will provide meeting minutes for the development and testing of the prototype, expected to be available within a year. The Associação Porto Digital also supports this endeavour, through the expertise in technological innovation and digital transformation in public administration.
This solution will contribute to more transparent administration decisions, while boosting civic participation. “By better understanding political processes, citizens will feel compelled to engage in public debates, question certain decisions, and follow them more closely. This can also be a valuable tool for journalists, allowing to highlight significant decisions that might otherwise go unnoticed,” added the researcher.
In the long term, this technology could have even broader implications, serving as a model for other public administration modernisation initiatives.
The project, led by INESC TEC in partnership with the University of Beira Interior (UBI) and the University of Porto, is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) within the scope of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR). The goal is to apply advanced technologies in cybersecurity, AI, and data science to accelerate the modernisation of public administration.
The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with UBI.
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