An exploratory study

This report provides the result of a research study conducted within the context of the Public Sector Tech Watch, an observatory developed by DG DIGIT, with the support of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), that provides a knowledge hub and a virtual space where public administrations, civil society, GovTech companies and researchers can find and share knowledge and experience.

The report’s primary goal is to offer an analysis of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are improving interoperability in the European Public Sector.

The findings are based on three pillars:

(i) a literature and policy review on the synergies between AI and interoperability;
(ii) a quantitative analysis of a selected set of 189 use cases fitting the purpose of the research question; and
(iii) a qualitative study going deeper into some illustrative cases.

The findings highlight that the one-fourth of the cases collected are using AI techniques to support interoperability through a varied set of applications. Moreover, the semantic interoperability layer is fundamental in most of the cases. In addition, ontologies and taxonomies combined with AI can help in establishing interoperability between different systems.

The solutions analysed classify, detect and provide structure, among other actions performed on data. Hence, AI has the capability to standardise, clean, structure and increase the usage of large volumes of data, thus improving overall quality and making it easier to use and share between different systems.

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC134713/JRC134713_01.pdf