Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said he had appointed the world’s first AI-generated government minister to oversee public tenders, promising its artificial intelligence would make the administration “corruption-free”.
Presenting his new cabinet yesterday at a meeting of his Socialist Party following a big May election victory, Rama introduced the new “member”, named “Diella”, which means “Sun” in Albanian.
“Diella is the first [government] member who is not physically present but virtually created by artificial intelligence,” AFP reported Rama as saying.
Diella would help make Albania “a country where public tenders are 100 per cent free of corruption”, he said, according to The Guardian.
Announcing the makeup of his fourth consecutive government at the ruling Socialist Party conference in Tirana, Rama said Diella, who on the e-Albania portal is dressed in traditional Albanian costume, would become “the servant of public procurement”.
Diella has been advising users on the portal since January, helping them through voice commands with the full range of bureaucratic tasks they need to perform in order to access about 95 per cent of citizen services digitally.
So far, Diella has helped issue 36,600 digital documents and provided nearly 1,000 services through the platform, according to official figures, France 24 reported.
Responsibility for deciding the winners of public tenders would be removed from government ministries in a “step-by-step” process and handled by artificial intelligence, Rama said yesterday.
He is due to present his new cabinet to lawmakers in the coming days.
The fight against corruption, particularly in the public administration, is a key criterion in Albania’s bid to join the European Union.
Rama aspires to lead the Balkan nation of 2.8 million people into the bloc by 2030.
Diella would examine every tender in which the government contracts private companies and objectively assess the merits of each, said Rama, who has previously said he saw AI as a potentially effective anti-corruption tool that would eliminate bribes, threats and conflicts of interest.
Public tenders have long been a source of corruption scandals in Albania, which experts say is a hub for international gangs seeking to launder money from trafficking drugs and weapons and where graft has extended into the upper reaches of government.
Albanian media praised the Diella appointment as “a major transformation in the way the Albanian government conceives and exercises administrative power, introducing technology not only as a tool, but also as an active participant in governance”, according to Kosovan daily Gazetta Express yesterday.
Ram’s move comes as part of an effort to introduce technology and AI deeper into the functioning of the State, breaking the traditional boundaries of bureaucracy and increasing transparency in delicate national sectors.
The decision signals a major transformation in the way the Albanian Government conceives and exercises administrative power, introducing technology not only as a tool but also as an active participant in governance.
Diella “will have an adapted structure and a special mandate to break down the fears, barriers and narrowness of the administration”, Rama declared during his speech.
