The 15th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, held on 30-31 July 2022 in Wroxton, UK, included several presentations on state-of-the parliamentary topics. Among them there were two contributions of mine on artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing.
Working paper A full title
Crowdsourcing the digital parliament: the case of the Hellenic OCR Team
Authors
Fotios Fitsilis, Hellenic Parliament, Greece; George Mikros, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
Abstract
Parliaments will eventually not evade the digital evolution of every institution to become data-driven organisations. This development constitutes an extraordinary opportunity for the strengthening of legislatures that needs to be embraced rather than a formidable phenomenon that should be delayed by any means. Emerging technologies, the lack of digital strategy, and change management processes put, among other things, parliaments in front of severe obstacles to cope with the issue of its digital transformation. Under certain conditions, crowdsourcing, in other words, the power of the people, can be appropriately channeled and exploited to support representative institutions and their societal stakeholders in managing their change processes. Based on survey findings and structured interviews, this study investigates the case of the Hellenic OCR Team, an innovative crowdsourcing initiative for the processing and analysis of parliamentary data.
Citation
Fitsilis, F. & Mikros, G. (2022). Crowdsourcing the digital parliament: the case of the Hellenic OCR Team.15th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, 30-31 July 2022, Wroxton, UK. https://wroxtonworkshop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-Fitsilis-Mikros-.pdf
URL: https://wroxtonworkshop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-Fitsilis-Mikros-.pdf
******
Working paper B full title
Prioritisation of artificial Intelligence technologies in law-making for the parliamentary workspace
Authors
Fotios Fitsilis, Scientific Service, Hellenic Parliament; Jörn von Lucke, Zeppelin University, Germany; Jan Etscheid, Zeppelin University, Germany
Abstract
Parliaments are currently free to use applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to perform certain tasks. Those have many manifestations and can be currently found in countless mainstream applications, emphasising relevance and urgency of academic and practical contributions on AI. If one reflects on conceivable tools, fields of application, usage scenarios, and needs, it is reasonable to expect AI-induced changes in parliaments, which are likely to significantly change them over the next decade. This makes even more peculiar the fact that the introduction of AI in parliaments is a generally under-researched topic. This working paper contributes to the bridging of research gaps by presenting empirical evidence for the future use of AI-based tools and services in the parliamentary workspace. In particular, applications of AI in law-making are going to be analysed and discussed. The data were collected in 2021 during a virtual workshop at the Hellenic Parliament in collaboration with the German Zeppelin University. Their analysis sheds light in the prioritisation of AI-based technologies within the parliamentary environment. Prioritisation is therefore important because parliaments as organisations seem to miss the critical market mass, the expertise as well as the funding to parallelly develop several AI-solutions to satisfy all possible needs..
Citation
Fitsilis, F., von Lucke, J., & Etscheid, J. (2022). Prioritisation of artificial Intelligence technologies in law-making for the parliamentary workspace. 15th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, 30-31 July 2022, Wroxton, UK. https://wroxtonworkshop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-Fitsilis-.pdf
URL: https://wroxtonworkshop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-Fitsilis-.pdf
The official group photo of the 2022 Wroxton Workshop
******