As one of the German partner companies in the new IPCEI-CIS funding programme of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK), elevait will actively shape the implementation of artificial intelligence in a secure, distributed cloud for the public sector (abbreviation: AIDED). 

elevait will focus on three objectives of the integrated IPCEI project for the integration of novel software in a cloud infrastructure. Specifically, the focus here is on the digitalisation of public administration, partial automation as a strategic component in the progressive shortage of employees and the homogeneous integration of cloud and edge infrastructures.

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AIDED as a Sub-project of the European Funding Project IPCEI-CIS 

“Important Project of Common European Interest” - short IPCEI Projects - are, as the name suggests, an important component of European economic policy. These transnational projects provide an essential impulse for growth, employment and competitiveness in European industry and economy. This is made possible by the joint investment efforts of cooperating European companies and the support of state funding. It is an integrated project involving in particular companies and research institutions from several EU member states.

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The aim of the European Union and the underlying funding of these projects is to remain a global leader in strategically important sectors such as information and communication technology or renewable energies.

The Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services (IPCEI-CIS) project aims to focus on the requirements of European industry for cloud infrastructure. The primary aim is to promote European solutions in order to become independent of the market leadership of individual international hyperscalers and to maintain the innovation potential of the European economy.

On 5th December 2023, this was also supported by the European Commission by an official press release and underlined with a further statement by EU Commissioner Reynders.

From Call to Funded Project Partners 

In July 2021, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy announced a call for participation in the IPCEI-CIS. From this, 22 promising project outlines were selected. From October 2021 to February 2022, a further "matchmaking" process was implemented at European level for the corresponding projects. The aim: Gaining further partners from the participating projects in other member states in order to set up and organize an overall project at European level.

The BMWK has now registered around 20 companies for funding with the European

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elevait meets the Challenges of the Public Sector

There are essentially three fundamental challenges that elevait defined in the AIDED project and which provide the basis for the solutions developed:

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‍1. The Lack of Digitalisation in the public sector. The intended digitalisation should primarily serve to modernize the IT of public administration and largely automate traditional administrative processes. The aim is not only to establish a large number of modified or new business processes, but also to transform analogue processes and lay the foundations for the use of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud usage.

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‍2. The Increasing Shortage of Skilled Labour. Both, demographic change and the pressure on public coffers as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, are intensifying developments in the labor market. In order to counteract this shortage of available skilled workers and employees in general, appropriate training and recruitment must take place. At the same time, the use of the latest IT technologies also needs to be examined. In particular, the partial automation of processes with the help of artificial intelligence can make an important contribution here in order to facilitate tedious, manually repetitive tasks.

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  3. Necessary Provision of Cloud Infrastructures. The use of cloud offerings will play a crucial role in providing IT applications using state-of-the-art technologies. With the provision of digital infrastructure, it is also a mandatory requirement to effectively prevent the outflow of data to third countries and to fulfill other requirements in the public sector. A pioneering role for the public sector in terms of energy efficiency is also to be developed. Finally, the aim is to ensure that existing server infrastructures are further developed into security-certified hybrid cloud solutions with new cloud offerings.

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How are the Realisations in the Project planned through Technology and Partnerships?

In order to optimize the intended applications in their practical implementation and prepare them for future-proof, widespread use, joint implementation with selected pilot partners is an integral part of the project.

Knowledge-based process automation in particular will be used in the automation and optimisation of administrative tasks and specialist procedures. The focus here is on combining individual knowledge from the domain & users with the technological possibilities for knowledge management in organizations. The aim is to automate the majority of repetitive tasks, especially in document processing, in the future. It is not important whether the documents were originally provided in paper-based or digital form. The technologies are primarily intended to take on assisting functions for the relevant stakeholders. The aim is therefore explicitly not to replace jobs.

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In addition, AI is used to ensure that (partially) automated administrative tasks can be easily transferred to customers, such as local authorities or utility companies. This results in a high level of time and cost efficiency. Another key requirement here is that the implemented processes can be easily customized by domain experts for their specific use cases, despite local or nationwide adaptations. 

The provided intuitive handling of the platform is therefore a key component for all targeted automation processes. Testing, optimizing and monitoring with all pilot partners is an important project component. On the one hand, it is crucial for ensuring general validity for other customers in the various domains and user groups. Furthermore, it is also important for further testing in order to enable an assessment of how efficiently the technological solutions overcome the challenges presented.

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Hosting in cloud edge infrastructures is planned for the provision of partial automation. These will be realized by the project partners. In Germany and other EU countries is a large selection of cloud providers that enable secure and data protection compliant IT solutions in distributed infrastructures. Thanks to the IPCEI-CIS, these providers are working together on a standardized software infrastructure that is also scalable for AI-based public sector products. This means that the software solutions provided by elevait can also be relied upon to run reliably and effectively.

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The Role of AIDED for Future Projects and the European Economy

One of the common goals of the AIDED project is to reduce CO2 emissions, particularly in the area of providing digital solutions. To this end, the project implementation will realise a software architecture that aims to reuse software solutions and, in particular, elaborately trained AI models. It can be said with confidence that around 70% of the required models, such as handwriting recognition, document classification or invoice extraction, can be reused directly across customers this way. 

Furthermore, the economic prospects for follow-up projects from AIDED are very promising. The planned solutions can be used in many application areas as well as domains and can be integrated by companies and institutions without any special knowledge of AI. That in fact goes back to their simple configuration and use. AIDED's solutions help to create new markets and secure existing ones: The implementation of the Online Access Act (OZG) and new solution approaches such as the Promotion of IT Cooperation (FITKO) can create new markets for the use of AI in public administration. At the same time, existing markets for traditional software solutions are being expanded by modern and intelligent applications.

This research project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag. Funded by the European Union. Funding reference: 13IPC027

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