Tag artificial intelligence

27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024): Celebrating the past, inspiring the future

Anastasija Nikiforova 2 Comments

This October was one of the busiest yet most rewarding months of the year for me. Among several work trips, the highlight was attending the 27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024) in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, ECAI remains Europe’s premier venue for AI research and innovation, bringing together thought leaders, researchers, and industry professionals from around the world.

This year’s theme, “Celebrating the Past, Inspiring the Future,” captured the spirit of ECAI’s half-century legacy while driving forward-looking discussions on the next era of artificial intelligence. With over 1,500 participants from 59 countries (so not so very European conference anymore, but rather a global event) and a packed schedule of more than 150 events, among which:

  • “Towards Real-World Fact-Checking with Large Language Models” keynote talk by Iryna Gurevych, (Technische Universität Darmstadt), reflecting on advancements in using language models for verifying information in real time;
  • “Robots (Still) Need Humans in the Loop,” keynote talk by Iolanda Leite (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), who underscored the essential role humans play in AI-driven robotics, even as systems grow more autonomous;
  • “Economic Complexity: Using Machine Learning to Understand Economic Development” keynote talk by Cesar A. Hidalgo (Toulouse School of Economics & Corvinus University of Budapest) that examined how machine learning is transforming our understanding of economic trends and predictions.

These were accompanied with a range of panels, with a few sessions that stood out (my personal opinion though):

  • Economic Impact of AI: Threats and Opportunities with Jeremy Rollison (Microsoft Corporation), David Autor (MIT), and Raquel Jorge Ricart (Elcano Royal Institute) on AI’s potential to reshape labor markets and economies around the world;
  • AI Regulation: The European Scenario (Kilian Gross, Dr. Clara Neppel, IEEE, Beatriz Alvargonzalez Largo, European Commission, José Miguel Bello Villarino, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society), addressed regulatory considerations;
  • 50th Anniversary Session on the History of AI in Europe paying tribute to AI’s history in Europe, with Luc Steels, Stefano Cerri, Fredrik Heintz, and Tony Cohn sharing reflections on past achievements and a “follow-up” on it in the Future of AI: The Next 50 Years with Fredrik Heintz, Iryna Gurevych, José Hernández-Orallo, Ann Nowe, Toby Walsh;
  • Designing Ethical and Trustworthy AI Research Policies for Horizon Europe centered on ethical standards and trustworthy AI research practices within the EU’s Horizon program, led by Mihalis Kritikos from the European Commission;
  • Funding your Scientific Research with the European Research Council (ERC) with Enrique Alba.

As part of this conference, I had pleasure of presenting a paper co-authored with my former student Jan-Erik Kalmus, based on his Master’s thesis, which I had the privilege of supervising. Our paper, “To Accept or Not to Accept? An IRT-TOE Framework to Understand Educators’ Resistance to Generative AI in Higher Education,” examined what barriers might prevent educators from adopting Generative AI tools in their classrooms? Since the public release of ChatGPT, there has been a lively debate about the potential benefits and challenges of integrating Generative AI in educational contexts. While the technology holds promise, it has also sparked concerns, particularly among educators. In the field of information systems, Technology Adoption models are often used to understand factors that encourage or inhibit the use of new technologies. However, many existing models focus primarily on acceptance drivers, often overlooking the unique barriers that educators face. This study seeks to fill that gap by developing a theoretical model specifically tailored to identify the barriers that may prevent educators—academic staff in particular—from integrating Generative AI into their teaching. Our approach builds on Innovation Resistance Theory, augmented by constructs from the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. With the designed mixed-method measurement instrument, combining quantitative data with qualitative insights, to capture educators’ specific concerns around Generative AI adoption in higher education, our model has been applied in real-world settings, specifically focusing on Estonian higher education institutions. We examined whether academic staff at public universities in Estonia – often referred to as a “digital nation” – show reluctance toward Generative AI use in educational settings. Preliminary findings highlight several concerns unique to educators, which may shape how Generative AI is integrated into teaching practices.

A Heartfelt Thanks to ECAI’s Organizers – the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Society, CiTIUS (Research Centre on Intelligent Technologies), and, of course, the city of Santiago de Compostela for being such a welcoming place.

The Estonian Open Data Forum – Celebrating Progress and Recognizing Achievements

Anastasija Nikiforova 2 Comments

This October, I had the distinct honor of participating in Estonia’s premier event on open data, the Open Data Forum (Avaandmete foorum), organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia, invited to talk about the role of academia and private sector in the open government data landscape. This annual gathering brings together industry experts, academic researchers, and government leaders to discuss key trends, achievements, and the future of open data in Estonia, along with highlighting the contributions coming from universities awarding the best dissertations developed by Estonian students. The latter made this event very special for me, as one of my students – Kevin Kliimask – was awarded for his outstanding bachelor’s thesis 🏆 🥇 🏅!

In his thesis –“Automated Tagging of Datasets to Improve Data Findability on Open Government Data Portals,” Kevin developed an LLM-powered interface to automate dataset tagging in both English and Estonian, thereby augmenting metadata preparation by data publishers and improving data findability on portals by users – as the practice shows their presence tend to be a challenge. E.g., our analysis conducted on the Estonian Open Data Portal, revealed that 11% datasets have no associated tags, while 26% had only one tag assigned to them, which underscores challenges in data findability and accessibility within the portal, which, according to the recent Open Data Maturity Report, is considered trend-setter. The developed solution was evaluated by users and their feedback was collected to define an agenda for future prototype improvements. The thesis has been already transformed into the scientific paper 👉 “TAGIFY: LLM-powered Tagging Interface for Improved Data Findability on OGD portals“ presented at the IEEE international conference (I posted on this earlier 👉 here).

As for my talk titled “Unlocking the Power of Open Data: The Role of Academia and the Private Sector in Building Inclusive and Sustainable Open Data Ecosystems,” I emphasized the need for a holistic approach to open data that transcends merely opening/publishing data, rather requiring adopting a systemic view that considers an open data initiative as an Open Data Ecosystem (also confirmed by Open Data Charter 👉here), as we deal not only with open data (availability), portal, stakeholders, actors, but also processes surrounding them, emerging technologies & different forms of intelligence, going beyond just Artificial Intelligence, whose role, however, is crucial (see our paper on the eight-fold role of AI in OGD).

As such, while discussing the main idea of ​​the talk – the role of academia & the private sector in the ODE, which as per me is at least four-fold, namely – data consumers, data providers, contributors to ODE sustainability & myth busters on the global stage (assigning “Made in Estonia” tag to OGD in addition to the one we have for e-government), I also expanded the general mantra of “Data For AI” to “data for AI, AI for data, data not only for AI and not only AI for data”.


A big thank you to the organisers, who gathered so many speakers (Cybernetica, FinEst Centre for Smart Cities, Riigi Infosüsteemi Amet // Estonian Information System Authority (NCSC-EE), University of Tartu and many others) to discuss the highlights of today & tomorrow for Estonian Open Data and High-Value Datasets in particular as it was the main focus of the Forum – was happy to be part of these discussions!

The 25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (DGO2024): a brief summary on presenter, track chair, panel organizer, and moderator roles

Anastasija Nikiforova 1 Comment

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the 25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (DGO2024), organized by the Digital Government Society and hosted by National Taiwan University in the beautiful city of Taipei (Taiwan) under “Internet of Beings: Transforming Public Governance” theme. The conference offered an exceptional venue, warm hospitality from the local committee led by Helen Liu and her team, a rich social program, and an outstanding scientific program. The event featured well-selected keynotes and panels from prominent organizations such as Foxconn, the International Cooperation Center of TCA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Taipei Urban Intelligence Center, and the Ministry of Digital Affairs. Key topics included AI, Smart City initiatives, and Data Governance, which facilitated extensive networking and brainstorming sessions.

I was honored to contribute to this vibrant dialogue in multiple roles: presenter, track chair, panel organizer, and moderator. Together with my students and colleagues, we presented four papers, each reflecting our collaborative research efforts:

  1. Towards a Privacy and Security-Aware Framework for Ethical AI (Daria Korobenko, Anastasija NIkiforova, Rajesh Sharma). The proposed (conceptual at the moment) privacy and security-Aware Framework for ethical AI is centered around the Data, Technology, People, and Process dimensions, where each dimension is guided by a set of specific questions to encompass the overarching themes of privacy and security within AI systems, while the framework itself follows a risk-based approach (similar to the EU AI Act). As such, it is designed to assist diverse stakeholders, including organizations, academic institutions, and governmental bodies, in both the development and critical assessment of AI systems.
  2. Exploring Estonia’s Open Government Data Development as a Journey towards Excellence: Unveiling the Progress of Local Governments in Open Data Provision (Katrin Rajamae-Soosaar and Anastasija Nikiforova) that explores the evolution of Estonia’s 🇪🇪 OGD development at both national & local levels through analysis of indices, Estonian OGD portal, and a literature review. Findings reveal national progress due to portal improvements and legislative changes, while local governments lag in OGD provision, highlighting the need for future research on municipal OGD barriers and enablers.
  3. An Integrated Usability Framework for Evaluating Open Government Data Portals: Comparative Analysis of EU and GCC Countries (Fillip Molodtsov and Anastasija Nikiforova) develops a framework to evaluate OGD portal usability, considering user diversity, collaboration, and data exploration capabilities, and applies it to 33 national portals in the EU and GCC 🇪🇺🇸🇦🇶🇦🇧🇭🇦🇪, highlighting good practices and common shortcomings, emphasizing competitiveness of GCC portals
  4. Unlocking the Potential of Open Government Data: Exploring the Strategic, Technical, and Application Perspectives of High-Value Datasets Opening in Taiwan (Hsien-Lee Tseng and Anastasija Nikiforova). In short, data has an unprecedented value. However, availability of data in an open data format creates a little added value, where the value of these data [to the real needs of the end user], is key. This is where the concept of high-value dataset (HVD) comes into play, which has become popular in recent years (predominantly beforehand OD Directive by European Commission). Defining and opening HVD, in turn, is a complex process consisting of a set of interrelated steps, the implementation of which may vary from one country or region to another. Therefore, there has recently been a call to conduct research in a country or region setting considered to be of greatest national value. So far, only a few studies have been conducted, most of which consider only one step of the process, such as identifying HVD or measuring their impact. With this study, we explore the entire lifecycle of HVD opening in case of one of the world’s leading producers of ICT products – Taiwan. To do this, we conduct a qualitative study with exploratory interviews with representatives from government agencies in Taiwan responsible for HVD opening, namely Ministry of Digital Affairs, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and the Ministry of Environment. As part of these interviews, we examine strategic aspects associated with HVD determination, technical aspects related to the dataset preparation stage (incl. data quality, granularity, update frequency, integration methods, or data evaluation), and application aspects related to the further assessment of the impact generated by HVD, identifying some good practices and weaknesses to be further examined and fixed.

I also chaired the track “Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems,” which we launched this year with colleagues, on which I posted before. Although this is the very new track, we received a good number of contributions as it appeared to be very timely and we hope to see it to have a continuation, serving as a stage for the dialogue by Digital Government Society around the public and open data ecosystem in and for our digital future. At least this session has demonstrated the interest in such an environment – many thanks to all, who actively participated in this discussion. BTW, should you be interested in difference between public vs open data ecosystem, I encourage you to read our conceptualization and typology in our “Understanding the development of public data ecosystems: from a conceptual model to a six-generation model of the evolution of public data ecosystems” paper. We also are optimistic that the best contributions from this track will soon be available in a special section of the Information Polity Journal that we have recently launched.

In addition, together with Hsien-Lee Tseng, we organized the panel “Sociotechnical Transformation in the Decade of Healthy Ageing to Empower the Silver Economy: Bridging the Silver Divide through Social and Digital Inclusion,” which addressed crucial issues related to the integration of aging populations into the digital economy and society. Our discussions focused on case studies from Taiwan and Estonia, two regions with significant aging populations and leaders in ICT and digital government. We explored several innovative initiatives:

  1. The Aged Dwelling Plan by the Ministry of Interior of Taiwan, which proactively delivers resources to those most in need through the Senior Living Needs Index Framework. It integrates cross-agency data such as household registration, building information, long-term care, low-income households, and open geospatial data.
  2. The Digital Silver Hub constituting the ecosystem fosters innovative solutions for the silver population, involving the public sector, private sector, academia, and end-users. It utilizes a collective intelligence model to address the challenges faced by older adults.
  3. Health Promotion, Technology Inclusion by National Taitung University aimed at achieving technological inclusion, this project focuses on non-discriminatory health promotion technology policies and activities for people with chronic diseases.

As such, our discussions highlighted the opportunities and challenges in supporting the Decade of Healthy Ageing, an initiative by the United Nations. Key themes included Data Management, Security, and Privacy, Digital Literacy and Regional Adoption, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and User-Centric Design, Interoperability. Our panel concluded that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges faced by the aging population. Instead, it is crucial to recognize and leverage the capacities and strengths of each region to develop tailored solutions, whether they be social, technical, or sociotechnical. By doing so, we can create effective and sustainable strategies to support healthy aging and bridge the silver divide.

The conference also featured a working meeting on the new Digital Government Society Chapter, “Artificial Intelligence & Government.” I contributed to the discussions and look forward to continued involvement and impact in this ambitious initiative led by Fadi Salem.

In summary, DGO2024 was an incredibly insightful and productive week.

International Week in Babeș-Bolyai University 🇷🇴 any 6-hour long course on “Crafting Success: The Art of Business Process Management”

Anastasija Nikiforova 1 Comment

This May, I had a pleasure to take part in International Week in Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania) 🇷🇴 delivering 6-hour long “Crafting Success: The Art of Business Process Management” course for undergraduates, Master and PhD students that was based on the course we (with Marlon Dumas) deliver at the University of Tartu Institute of Computer Science.

As part of this course, we delved deep into the fundamental principles and methods of business process management along the lifecycle of business processes were introduced, providing students with the understanding on:

  1. Process Identification and Organization: students learned how to identify key business processes and organize them into a coherent architecture, laying the foundation for effective management and improvement;
  2. Performance Measurement and Prioritization: we explored methods for defining performance measures and prioritizing initiatives for process improvement, ensuring that efforts are focused on areas that deliver the most significant impact;
  3. Process Modeling and Analysis: through the BPMN notation, students were equipped to capture and analyze business processes effectively, facilitating clear communication and understanding across teams;
  4. Process Redesign: The course also delved into strategies for analyzing and redesigning processes to align with performance objectives, employing transformational and transactional approaches such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and redesign heuristics.

Additionally, an overview of BPM tools for process automation and monitoring, highlighting the pivotal role of BPM models in driving the design of IT solutions that support seamless process execution, was provided to students.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the course was witnessing the genuine interest and active participation of our students. Their enthusiasm and engagement presented a delightful challenge when selecting the most outstanding contributors for recognition at the course’s conclusion.

Beyond the confines of our classroom, involvement in the International Week themed “Business Education without Borders” opened doors for students to a myriad of interdisciplinary explorations. From data mining with AI to delving into digital market research ethics, students embarked on a journey encompassing finance, law, accounting, multicultural consumer behavior, supply chain dynamics, and risk management. This immersive experience, enriched by guest lecturers from diverse cultural backgrounds, fostered cross-cultural exchange and equipped participants with invaluable skills and knowledge essential for success in today’s global business landscape.

A heartfelt thank you to the organizers for the opportunity to be part of this enriching experience. While I regret not being able to join in person, I am certain that the event was a resounding success, thanks to the dedication and hard work of everyone involved.

Guest Lecture for the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR) on “Unlocking the symbiotic relationship of Artificial Intelligence, Data Intelligence, Collaborative Intelligence, and Embodied Intelligence for innovative urban planning and governance of Smart Cities”

Anastasija Nikiforova 1 Comment

This May, I had a pleasure to deliver one more guest lecture for master and doctoral students of the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR)) as part of Smart Cities course delivered by prof. Regina Negri Pagani. This time the topic of my lecture was “Unlocking the symbiotic relationship of Artificial Intelligence, Data Intelligence, Collaborative Intelligence, and Embodied Intelligence for innovative urban planning and governance of Smart Cities”.

In the pursuit of enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence, it is imperative to explore synergies with other form of intelligence, such Data Intelligence and Collaborative intelligence. These forms of intelligence (along with Embodied Intelligence) constitute a new transformative paradigm of intelligence proposed by Verhulst et al. (2021) that offers potential for increased added value when synergized. However, their synergy requires understanding and harnessing the symbiotic relationship between these intelligences. The reimagination of decision making and problem-solving processes, is essential to unlock this symbiotic potential fostering more meaningful, but at the very same time more sustainable AI utilization. In other words, AI itself brings a certain value that can be (and must be) increased through integration with other forms of Intelligence. This, in turn, has a list of preconditions / prerequisites that must be satisfied by the above – Artificial, Data, Collaborative, and Embodied Intelligence – components. These prerequisites are diverse in nature and span both the artifacts in question, such as AI, data (type, format, quality, value, availability, accessibility, incl. openness), stakeholders’ skills and literacies, but also management and organizational aspects. In other words, each form of Intelligence influences the others, making it crucial to explore their interconnections. This talk endeavoured to uncover this intricate web of relationships between the three forms of intelligence, taking a step towards a more meaningful and intelligent approach to decision making and problem solving.

As part of this talk we referred to the theory of multiple intelligences by Howard Gardner presented in his famous book “Frames of Mind: A Theory of Multiple Intelligences”. Then, we referred to the above mentioned intelligence paradigm proposed by Stefaan G. Verhulst, Peter Martey Addo, Dominik Baumann, Juliet Mcmurren, Andrew Young, Andrew J. Zahuranec in “Emerging Uses of Technology for Development: A New Intelligence Paradigm“. Then, we finally turned to the actual discussion on the symbiotic relationship of Artificial Intelligence, Data Intelligence, Embodied Intelligence, Collaborative Intelligence, and Generative AI uncovering this intricate web of relationships between these forms of intelligence, putting the above into several contexts with a focus on public & public and open data ecosystems. The later topics, in turn, covered some of my previous research (such as “Sustainable open data ecosystems in smart cities: A platform theory-based analysis of 19 European cities, ” “Identifying patterns and recommendations of and for sustainable open data initiatives: A benchmarking-driven analysis of open government data initiatives among European countries“, “Transparency of open data ecosystems in smart cities: Definition and assessment of the maturity of transparency in 22 smart cities“ etc.). As such, we tried to indicate future avenues in the light of changing paradigms (or need for such) for intelligences, data ecosystems, mechanisms for citizen engagement & processes (incl., but not limited to data governance & data quality management) accompanying these ecosystems


This followed up by the fruitful discussion with the participants of the course that I enjoyed very much. I can only hope that this lecture was just a little bit as interesting as my dear Regina characterized it! There is nothing better than hear an immediate invitation for the next editions of this course – will be glad to continue this tradition!