Estonia’s Ministry of Finance plans to use artificial intelligence to help analyze political parties’ election promises before the spring Riigikogu elections, according to the ministry’s plan. The ministry says the tool will sort promises, find relevant documents and prepare preliminary work for analysts, who will review and supplement the results.
The ministry has examined election promises before Riigikogu elections since 2007. Its analysis estimates what a promise would cost and how it could affect the budget. Where possible, it also considers whether a proposal is feasible, including whether it complies with European Union legislation or is already being carried out under an existing development plan.
AI To Sort Promises And Find Documents
Raoul Lättemäe, head of the ministry’s fiscal policy department, said preparing the analysis involves work that AI could now perform. He described breaking election platforms into individual promises, sorting them by policy area and finding relevant background information.
The system is expected to search development plans, budgets, previous analyses and responses. Its preliminary work would help identify whether an issue has already been addressed elsewhere. The ministry’s analysts would then review and add to the material, Lättemäe said.
The ministry is holding a tender to find a service provider or system developer to build the tool. The Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs has a funding measure for central and local government bodies developing AI technologies. The source says the ministry plans to publish its analysis before the election and present its findings then.
Possible Public Search Tool
If the tender succeeds, the ministry also plans to make an election-promise search tool available to the public using the same search system. Lättemäe said its indexed material would include development plans, state budgets, the previous five analyses of election promises and, on an ongoing basis, election platforms.
He said individuals, journalists, researchers or others could connect their own AI system to the ministry’s system. The connected AI could answer questions using its training data and provide references to relevant material in a current government development plan, election promise or platform. The aim is to help people find promises and see whether a subject has been analyzed before or is covered by an existing plan.
The system is designed for Estonian-language text. It must find references in Estonian-language documents and identify relevant connections even when a question uses wording different from the original documents. That search function is intended to make the indexed material easier to access and use.
Human Review And Limits
The planned division of work leaves the preliminary sorting and document search to the AI tool, while analysts review and supplement its output. That distinction matters to the ministry’s stated purpose: the system assists the analysis, while the assessment itself is intended to remain politically neutral.
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The ministry will analyze only parties fielding a full list of candidates. Lättemäe said including others would make the workload too large or unmanageable. The next stated steps are the tender, development of the tool if that process succeeds, and publication of the analysis before the election.
