ISLAMABAD: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said Thursday he appointed the world’s first AI government minister to oversee public procurement to ensure transparency, eliminate corruption, and resist bribery.
The bot named ‘Diella’, named after the Albanian word for “sun,” will manage and award all government contracts to private companies through public tenders.
Diella was first introduced as a virtual assistant to help citizens access documents and services through the government’s e-Albania platform.
The digital avatar, depicted as a woman in traditional Albanian attire, has so far issued 36,600 documents and facilitated nearly 1,000 services, the Guardian reported.
The AI-generated bot uses voice commands with the full range of bureaucratic tasks they need to perform in order to access about 95% of citizen services digitally.
Diella’s launch
Rama started his fourth consecutive government at the ruling Socialist party conference in Tirana, Rama said Diella would become “the servant of public procurement”.
“Diella is the first government member who is not physically present, but virtually created by artificial intelligence,” Rama told party members.
Corruption-free process
Rama said that entrusting the assistant with procurement decisions would make the process “100-percent corruption-free and every public fund submitted to the tender procedure will be perfectly transparent.”
Public tenders have long been a source of corruption scandals in Albania. Local media described the addition of Diella 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.”
Rama is expected to formally present his cabinet to lawmakers in the coming days.
