Finance ministry to use artificial intelligence in its election promises analysis

Ahead of the spring Riigikogu elections, the Ministry of Finance will analyze election promises with the help of artificial intelligence.

The Ministry of Finance has analyzed election promises ahead of Riigikogu elections since 2007. Raoul Lättemäe, head of the ministry's fiscal policy department, said the analysis assesses the financial impact of election promises — how much a particular promise would cost and what impact it would have on the budget. Where possible, the analysis also comments on whether a promise is feasible, for example, whether it complies with European Union legislation or is already being implemented under an existing development plan.

For this election, artificial intelligence will be used to assist with the analysis. Lättemäe noted that preparing the analysis involves a great deal of work that could now be done by AI. "Breaking election platforms down into individual promises, sorting them by policy area and finding relevant background information," he explained.

For example, the system will search development plans, budgets and previous analyses or responses to determine whether the issue has already been addressed elsewhere. It will do the preliminary work needed to compile the analysis. "Of course, actual analysts will review and supplement all of it," Lättemäe said.

The analysis will be prepared and published before the election. Lättemäe said the Ministry of Finance will also give a presentation before the election to introduce the findings. The assessment itself will be politically neutral. The aim is to give voters a clearer picture of how much the promises would cost, allowing them to make more informed choices and have more substantive discussions about election promises.

The ministry is currently holding a tender to find a service provider or system developer to build the AI tool. The Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs has a funding measure for central and local government bodies to develop AI technologies. If the tender is successful, the ministry also plans to make an election-promise search tool available to the public using the same search system.

"This would allow individuals, journalists, researchers or anyone else to connect their own AI system to ours, where we have indexed development plans, state budgets, the previous five analyses of election promises and, on an ongoing basis, election platforms as well," Lättemäe said. This would allow people to improve the quality of AI-generated answers about the election or simply search for election promises through a web search.

AI will go beyond its training data in providing answers

The artificial intelligence connected to the system would therefore answer questions not only on the basis of its training data, but would also be able to provide specific references showing where the issue has been addressed in a current government development plan, election promise or platform. The tool is thus intended both to assist the ministry in carrying out its analysis and to make information more readily accessible and usable by AI, helping the public better understand what has been promised, whether it is feasible and whether it has been analyzed before.

The tool is designed for Estonian-language text, meaning it must be able to find references to relevant Estonian-language documents and identify the necessary connections even when a question is not phrased in exactly the same way as in the original documents.

The Ministry of Finance will analyze only parties that field a full list of candidates. "Otherwise, the workload would become too large or unmanageable," Lättemäe said.

Funding is provided in accordance with the procedure established by the minister of justice and digital affairs' regulation, "A model for a future-proof data economy ecosystem and infrastructure solutions for the secure management, processing and utilization of data."

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!

Editor: Merilin Leetna, Marcus Turovski