For 24 uninterrupted hours, 67 participants in 20 teams developed innovative AI solutions to help improve public services
To create the solutions, the participants used the tools generated by the Aina Project, promoted by the Government of Catalonia and BSC to encourage the use of Catalan in the digital arena.
The winners were the LAia team, which won the first prize of €4,000, and the CClab team, which won the second prize of €2,000.
The Espai Bital, in Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), hosted the Aina Hack, a hackathon promoted by the Catalan Government with the dual aim of improving public services through solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) and promoting the use of the resources generated by the Aina Project to promote the use of Catalan in the digital world. The hackathon, organised by the Eurecat technology centre and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), is part of Catalonia's Artificial Intelligence Strategy Catalonia.AI through the CIDAI and the Aina Project.
The kick-off of the hackathon was given by the Director General of Digital Economy and Society, Sandra Ruiz, and the Secretary of Telecommunications and Digital Transformation, Albert Tort, who agreed that ‘from the Government, we are convinced that the Administration must be exemplary in the deployment of AI’. In this sense, the director Sandra Ruiz stated that ‘all the initiatives that, like the Aina Project, we are promoting within the framework of the Catalonia.AI strategy, are based on the ethical and transparent use of this technology’.
The Director of Digital Economy and Society also stressed that ‘this hackathon is evidence of Catalonia's capacity to bring together excellent, zero-kilometre talent committed to the development of innovative and quality AI-based solutions’, and thanked the participants ‘for wanting to dedicate their time and talent to improving public services and, therefore, people's lives’.
For his part, Secretary Tort highlighted the importance of events such as Aina Hack, which are the result of collaboration between the Government of Catalonia, leading organisations in the ICT field and global technology companies: ‘thanks to the involvement of these partners, today we can say that the Government of Catalonia is at the forefront of a new era in public management, where artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technology are tools at the service of citizens’. In this sense, he highlighted the role of the hackathon as ‘a space for designing the public services of the 21st century’, where innovative ideas emerge that must respond to the challenges posed by the transformation of public services promoted by the Government.
Aina Hack is a competition in which, during 24 uninterrupted hours and in person, the 20 participating teams, made up of 67 people, have developed a solution with AI aimed at solving one or more of the following challenges:
- Simplification and accessibility of administrative information.
- Virtual assistance and automation of digital services.
- Inclusion of Catalan dialects in digital services.
- Personalisation of content for citizens.
To achieve the objective, they have had to use resources generated by the Aina Project, promoted by the Catalan Government in collaboration with the BSC to promote the use of Catalan in the digital sphere through an open, transparent and ethical AI. The Aina resources are available in the Aina Kit, which includes language models and datasets available to developers of AI products and services and language technologies in Catalan.
The winners were the LAia team, made up of Pau Hidalgo Pujol, Roger Baiges Trilla, Abril Risso Matas, Cai Selvas Sala, who won the first prize of €4,000; and the CClab team, made up of Abril Serrano Espindola, Marcos Muñoz González, Ximena Serrano Espíndola, who won the second prize of €2,000.
Aina Hack is an initiative promoted by the Government of Catalonia, through the Secretariat for Digital Policies and the Secretariat for Telecommunications and Digital Transformation; organised by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and Eurecat, and with the collaboration of the Centre for Telecommunications and Information Technologies of the Government of Catalonia (CTTI), CIDAI, i2CAT Foundation, Google Cloud, Microsoft and NTT FECHA.