Fotios Fitsilis

Hellenic Parliament · Scientific Service

Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers both significant opportunities and challenges for parliamentary services. This brief, developed by Bússola Tech in collaboration with ASGP, OAS, and the Hellenic OCR Team, highlights how AI can enhance parliamentary operations. It describes various AI applications, such as legislative drafting, historical archivi...

This overview paper explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in parliaments from various perspectives. Ethical, social, and technical considerations are discussed, alongside different elements of conceptualization of AI integration. The role of AI is examined by highlighting various parliamentary applications where it can substantia...

Artificial Intelligence (ai) is on the rise and already affecting parliaments around the world. In the framework of a long-term and ongoing research project, a series of interactive workshops have been organized between 2021 and 2023 in three national parliaments, in Greece, Argentina, and Canada, with the objective to assess the relevance and prio...

This article outlines the digitization process and methodology applied to the archive of parliamentary questions from the 1st Parliamentary Term (1974–1977) in the Hellenic Parliament. A collaborative pilot project involving parliament, academia, and a research center facilitated the conversion of printed material to open data. The main tasks of th...

This publication provides an overview of the results of a European Union (EU) funded study entitled “Overview of smart functionalities in drafting legislation in LEOS”. The full study has been published on the European Commission's (EC) Joinup platform and centres on the concept of smart functionalities in law-making, i.e., advanced Information (an...

Large Language Models (LLMs) have gained significant traction, primarily due to their potential disruptive influence across industries reliant on natural language processing . Governance stands out as one such sector. Notably, there has been a surge in research activity surrounding the implications of LLMs in deciphering complex legal corpora. Thi...

Parliaments are already exploring the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for specific tasks. Reflecting on possible tools, application areas, usage scenarios, and requirements, it is reasonable to anticipate that AI-driven changes will manifest in parliamentary operations. Though Canada has been championing AI, additional resear...

In response to the global trend of incorporating artificial intelligence in e-Government systems, this contribution presents a strategic initiative for parliaments to adopt AI tools and services. The proposed framework outlines essential services to be implemented in the short term, whereas more complex ones can be planned for the medium and the lo...

These guidelines are designed to help parliaments embrace AI responsibly, maximising its potential benefits and minimising the threats posed by AI today and in the future. The first of their kind, the guidelines have been created by an international group of 22 parliamentary experts.

This article explores the multifaceted roles of parliaments beyond legislative functions, emphasizing their diverse portfolio that includes educational outreach, language preservation, historical archives, and technological innovations. It highlights these lesser-known, sometimes understudied, yet significant activities of parliaments worldwide in...

The study confirms, updates, and expands upon the findings of the reference study. It particular centres on smart functionalities, i.e., advanced and intelligent software capabilities to enhance the performance of the LEOS system using both AI and legacy technologies. It provides inter alia an extended list of smart functionalities, a detailed asse...

Parlamente analysieren derzeit, ob sich Technologien aus dem Bereich der künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) zur Erledigung bestimmter parlamentarischer Aufgaben eignen. Mit Blick auf Werkzeuge, Anwendungsbereiche, Nutzungsszenarien und Bedürfnisse werden KI-getriebene Veränderungen in Parlamenten erwartet. Der Einsatz von KI im parlamentarischen Raum ist...

This article highlights the state-of-play in law-making in Greece especially following the adoption of law 4622/2019 aiming at establishing a culture of principles and means for enhancing the quality of laws. The revised model for new legislation, as well as the approach taken for the transformation of existing laws into the new model, the so-calle...

Disruptive technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence ( ai ), currently dominate the debate on the future of societal organisations and structures and this trend has intensified since the emergence of ChatGPT in late 2022. Naturally, such topics are related to the opportunities and challenges that arise when utilising ai -based approaches a...

Parliaments are looking into using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to do certain tasks. Reflecting on conceivable tools, fields of application, usage scenarios and needs, it is reasonable to expect AI-induced changes in parliaments. However, not much research has been done on how to use AI in the parliamentary workspace. This article contri...

The article describes the evolution of an innovative legal interoperability laboratory within the National School of Public Administration and Local Government in Athens, Greece. While critically analysing its general scope, objectives and structure, the knowledge management perspective of an interoperable legal informatics solution for handling bi...

A new scientific partnership aims to advance the linear evolution of interparliamentary co-operation. The partnership’s concept foresees the implementation of exploratory workshops that investigate the relevance and priority of digital solutions that are based on artificial intelligence (AI) in parliament and workshops have recently been implemente...

Da der Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) in den parlamentarischen Prozessen immer mehr zunimmt, ist es notwendig, ethische und operative Leitlinien festzulegen, die Rechenschaftspflicht, Transparenz und menschliche Autonomie gewährleisten und gleichzeitig die Ziele der nachhaltigen Entwicklung fördern sowie Datenschutz, Sicherheit und Vielfa...

As the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in parliamentary processes becomes increasingly prevalent, it is necessary to establish ethical and operational guidelines that ensure accountability, transparency, and human autonomy, while promoting sustainable development goals and protecting privacy, security, and diversity. With this aim, a technical...

Καθώς η εφαρμογή της Τεχνητής Νοημοσύνης (ΤΝ) στις κοινοβουλευτικές διαδικασίες γίνεται όλο και πιο συχνή, καθίσταται απαραίτητη η θέσπιση ηθικών και επιχειρησιακών κατευθυντήριων γραμμών οι οποίες θα τη λογοδοσία, τη διαφάνεια και την ανθρώπινη αυτονομία, προωθώντας παράλληλα τους στόχους της βιώσιμης ανάπτυξης και προστατεύοντας την ιδιωτική ζωή,...

The year 2021 marked the 200th anniversary of the modern Greek State. Its top representative institution, the Hellenic Parliament, is now operating not far away from where the Pnyx stands, the birthplace of Athenian Democracy during the golden age of Perikles two and a half millennia ago. To celebrate this occasion, it is worth mentioning the timel...

New technologies put organisations in front of some difficult choices. This is not least true for parliaments that need to change to adapt to the ongoing digitalisation of societal processes, while continuing being meaningful poles in institutional systems of governance. One just needs to keep in mind that GovTech (Government Technology) is an alre...

Parliaments can, with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), be less like mysterious black box institutions. In reality, they constitute complex rule-based organisations that perform a variety of institutional functions, influenced by a wide range of parameters such as people, culture, structure and processes. Moreover, Parliaments generate and p...

Weltweit prüfen Parlamente derzeit den Einsatz von Anwendungen, die Technologien mit künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) nutzen, um bestimmte Aufgaben besser zu erfüllen. Mit Blick auf denkbare Werkzeuge, Anwendungsbereiche, Nutzungsszenarien und Bedürfnisse sind in den kommenden Jahren KI-induzierte Veränderungen in den Parlamenten zu erwarten. Umso be-m...

Sophisticated technological applications that use rules-based standards and semantic resources allow for the cooperative development of legal texts in real time, thus promoting the transparency of public administration decisions and reducing administrative costs. In this innovative environment, therefore, law-making can evolve aided by modern digit...

Parlamente analysieren derzeit, ob sich Technologien aus dem Bereich der künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) zur Erledigung bestimmter parlamentarischer Aufgaben eignen. Mit Blick auf Werkzeuge, Anwendungsbereiche, Nutzungsszenarien und Bedürfnisse werden KI-getriebene Veränderungen in Parlamenten erwartet. Der Einsatz von KI im parlamentarischen Raum ist...

Smart Parliaments: Data-Driven Democracy highlights the role of data within both centuries-old and relatively novel institutional functions such as legislative work and parliamentary diplomacy. It is precisely this balanced focus on both tradition and innovation that makes this work stand out. Moreover, the book systematically avoids a purely schol...

The article describes the creation of an innovative legal interoperability laboratory from scratch at the National School of Public Administration and Local Government in Athens. Its scope and objectives are critically analyzed and its modules described. The problem-based learning method has been applied to a synchronous and asynchronous distance l...

This is a report on the 15th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians that took place over the weekend of 30–31 July 2022 in Wroxton, Oxfordshire, in the United Kingdom. Scores of scholars, practitioners, and Members of Parliament ( mp s) from around the world gathered once again at the event’s remarkable venue, the Wroxton Abbey, fo...

Parliaments are currently investigating the use of applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to perform certain tasks. Reflecting on conceivable tools, fields of application, usage scenarios and needs, it is reasonable to expect AI-induced changes in parliaments. This makes even more peculiar the fact that the introduction of...

After much anticipation, the International Workshop of Scholars and Parliamentarians took place in Villa La Angostura, Argentina, from 7–8 April 2022. This report will first outline the general framework of the workshop’s organisation and implementation. It then describes the main areas of scientific debate, with a particular focus on the digital t...

Parliaments have a major role in the policy-making process, in which their digital tools and services could facilitate an even more efficient participation of several actors of the policy cycle. Based on advanced and user-friendly inter-and intra-digital cooperation platforms, citizens and businesses, along with parliamentarians and policy enablers...

Decision-making is a fundamental human process, central to the design and promulgation of effective legislation, as well as to the crafting of robust public policy. Supported by advances in legal informatics tools and services, in particular those that facilitate the extraction of meaningful information and metadata from legal documents, parliament...

Αυτό το άρθρο εξετάζει την έννοια και τη χρήση των όρων πρόσφυγας, μετανάστης και λαθρομετανάστης με αφετηρία το Ηλεκτρονικό Σώμα Κειμένων (ΗΣΚ) των Ερωτήσεων της Βουλής. Κατά την ανάλυσή του βασιστήκαμε σε εργαλεία Επεξεργασίας Φυσικής Γλώσσας (NLP) όπως το Sketch Engine, τα Voyant Tools, καθώς και μια σειρά από εξειδικευμένα εργαλεία εξόρυξης κει...

The accessibility and reuse of legal data is paramount for promoting transparency, accountability and, ultimately, trust towards governance institutions. The aggregation of structured and semi-structured legal data inevitably leads to the big data realm and a series of challenges for the generation, handling, and analysis of large datasets. When it...

In April 2021, the Committee for the Future of the Parliament of Finland (Eduskunta) organised an extraordinary hearing, that is, of an artificial intelligence (AI). While some legislatures and research groups had already begun to study the implication of AI in the parliamentary domain, this took the parliamentary world by surprise. It was the firs...

There is growing academic attention to both parliamentary diplomacy and to parliamentary digital communication in recent years. Yet, the study of Greek parliamentary diplomacy remains an under-researched topic. The paper brings together these two dimensions by considering the following case study: the Hellenic Parliament´s reactions to the November...

This paper presents the development of the first parliamentary corpus of written questions in the Hellenic Parliament. Moreover, we discuss a well-defined end-to-end process that has been streamlined and optimised to produce high-quality open text data based on parliamentary documents. Based on the above methodology, a representative sample of 2,00...

This article examines the developments around the application of the Twinning modality in Serbia, from 2004 to 2019, its sectoral distribution and impact, and the frequency of EU member states’ participation. Besides providing an accurate state-of-play, it attempts, for the first time in the literature, to map the influence of member states in Serb...

Societies are entering the age of technological disruption, which also impacts governance institutions such as parliamentary organizations. Thus, parliaments need to adjust swiftly by incorporating innovative methods into their organizational culture and novel technologies into their working procedures. Inter-Parliamentary Union World e-Parliament...

Because of their particular nature, representative institutions around the globe are usually well equipped, both legally and capacity-wise, to adequately respond to political crises; this is what political evolution has taught them. Responses to political crises have been developed and take the form of formal or informal rules of procedure that lie...

This article presents the work on social media analysis-driven policy-making platforms that are powered by classic social media analysis technologies, such as policy modelling, linguistic analysis, opinion mining, sentiment analysis and information visualization. The approach examines the user design perspective towards user experience in policymak...

The Xtralingua project aims at developing a tool for extracting quantitative text profiles from large collections of texts. Existing solutions and tools are hard to use and require high technical knowledge, often absent in researchers of Digital Humanities. We developed an open-source working prototype that can also be used in combination with othe...

Post-Legislative Scrutiny (PLS) is an emerging oversight technique which is applied by parliaments to scrutinise implementation and impact of specific laws or legal frameworks. This article takes stock of PLS practices in countries in South and Southeast Asia and argues that PLS can also be used to scrutinise complex processes at the national or su...

The United Nations 2030 Agenda is a global framework for sustainable development. This article sheds light on the engagement of parliaments to control the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs). For this purpose, institutional and non-institutional measures from a wide range of parliaments were evaluated and a general assessment fra...

This data set captures all EU-funded Twinning projects in Serbia during the CARDS and IPA periods, from 2004 to 2019. All in all, 79 projects were identified. Several details are attached to each project, such as sector, budget, duration, participation of EU member states and source(s) of information. A related journal paper with in-depth analysis...

This is the primary data set to a wide-range study of European referendums from 1972 to 2018. Data to 28 EU member states are provided. These include the turnover and YES/in-favor results. Moreover, the referendums are classified according to four distinct types, i.e. sovereignty, EU matters, constitutional and policy issues. The novel concept of "...

This is the underlying dataset to an ongoing study regarding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study sheds light on the engagement of parliaments to control implementation of SDGs. For this, institutional and non-institutional measures from several parliaments were evaluated. The two-dimensional matrix contains data on countries, intra- and...

This book discusses the necessity and perhaps urgency for the regulation of algorithms on which new technologies rely; technologies that have the potential to re-shape human societies. From commerce and farming to medical care and education, it is difficult to find any aspect of our lives that will not be affected by these emerging technologies. At...

This book discusses the necessity and perhaps urgency for the regulation of algorithms on which new technologies rely; technologies that have the potential to re-shape human societies. From commerce and farming to medical care and education, it is difficult to find any aspect of our lives that will not be affected by these emerging technologies. At...

Technological evolution is based on advanced algorithms, but the pace of development raises concerns over their ethical, proper, and legitimate utilization. This chapter discusses fundamental principles of administrative law, such as non-discrimination, accountability, and transparency. As it seems, participation of advanced algorithms in the lives...

The development of national, supranational, or global regulatory bodies for advanced algorithms is essential. In this chapter, a comparison of several approaches is attempted. Among others, the first steps towards the formation of regulatory bodies is explained. Moreover, we present a set of modes for classification of regulatory activities. Finall...

This book focuses on cases where regulation has been imposed on advanced algorithms due to judicial or administrative decisions. From a series of different topics of algorithmic conduct, a number of case studies have been selected, in order to determine similarities or divergence in regulatory behavior. The development of regulatory bodies is there...

This chapter constitutes the main chapter of the book, where landmark cases of algorithmic regulation are presented. In total, eight cases of algorithmic conduct are discussed. These involve both direct and indirect examples of regulation. Among others, examples from the ICT sector (data-protection, internet browsers, and ad-blockers) and the gig e...

This book offers a new perspective in the discussion around the subject of regulation of advanced algorithms. It presents a number of significant cases where changes in the code and/or the conduct of its developers or operators have been imposed following administrative or judicial decisions. But the existing legal weaponry is often insufficient to...

The United Nations 2030 Agenda is a global framework for sustainable development. While the Executive in each country has a mandate to implement the respective measures, parliaments are entrusted with passing the related legislation as well as overseeing its implementation. This paper sheds light on the engagement of parliaments to control implemen...

Η παρούσα πρόταση πολιτικής αποτυπώνει ένα φιλόδοξο αλλά ρεαλιστικό στρατηγικό σχέδιο για την αξιοποίηση των ευκαιριών της ψηφιακής εποχής που μπορεί να καταστήσει την ελληνική δημόσια διοίκηση πιο αποτελεσματική, ανοικτή και χωρίς αποκλεισμούς, παρέχοντας φιλικές ψηφιακές δημόσιες υπηρεσίες προς τους πολίτες και τις επιχειρήσεις.

As illegal migration towards EU Member States does not show much sign of abating any time soon, countries at the EU border attempt to apply their legal tools and their administrative capacity, as well as calling on more assistance from other EU Member States, to effectively tackle the developing challenges relating to increased migration flows. Wit...

Parliamentary administrators have to cope with a complex and ever-changing procedural framework, as well as with conflicting demands from the policy side. Nevertheless, their role in inter-parliamentary cooperation is rather under-researched. This article focuses on the actors of Administrative Parliamentary Networks and introduces two entirely new...

Parliamentary Research Services (PaRS) are indispensable components of democratic Parliaments. Their contribution lies not only in the provision of services related to data and knowledge, but also in the elevation of Parliaments into first order national institutions, thus keeping up with their primary constitutional function as the legislative pow...

In an era of end-to-end digitalization in parliamentary institutions, open data and established printed and electronic publication formats for contemporary and future content, the old, non-digitized and potentially corroded content still poses a great challenge in terms of preservation and promoting efficient usage. Among its other duties, the Scie...

The organisational stability of Parliaments comes in direct contradiction with rapid progress in digital technology in recent decades, particularly in the ICT domain. By participating in a series of networking activities through European funded research projects the Hellenic Parliament and the Austrian Parliament have placed themselves in the foref...

The Hellenic Parliament stores parliamentary questions using a combination of metadata extracted manually from the original text as well as the scanned document as an image file. Consequently, broad access and study of the parliamentary questions are limited as there is no principal access to the original content. A combined process was designed in...

The role of the national Parliaments in scrutinizing the governments’ actions has been in the academic agenda for a long time. The paper will examine the parliamentary response, in terms of parliamentary control, on the governmental negotiations for three Economic Adjustment Programmes for Greece in the time period from 2010 and 2015. In an additio...

Referenda and popular legislative initiatives constitute the main institutions of direct democracy worldwide. By gradually creating a fertile environment for citizens' political maturation and by triggering co-responsibility at the level of decision making, these institutions do not annul nor substitute the representative system of contemporary dem...

The presentation is describing the way that the legislative functions of parliaments could be transformed by social and technological change, notably the rising importance of the internet, social media, crowdsourcing and the possible implications for parliamentary democracy and the public sphere at the national level. Furthermore, it presents a com...

“Is crowdsourcing the future for legislation?”, Brian Heaton recently asked in an article focusing on experiments in the U.S. allowing citizens to propose and edit legislation online. In Europe, the Finnish crowdsourcing experiment in writing a new law on off-road traffic has gained much attention, both with regard to the legislative and the educat...

We report on the performance of a planetary multi-wafer MOCVD reactor which handles 5 six inch wafers simultaneously. The reactor is combined with a liquid delivery system which mixes the liquid precursors from three different sources: 0.35 molar solutions of Ba(thd) 2 and Sr(thd) 2 and a 0.4 molar solution of Ti(O-i-Pr) 2 (thd) 2 . The microstruct...

Thin films of different compositions within the (Bax,Sr1−x)TiO3 solid solution series were deposited in a planetary multi-wafer MOCVD reactor using different solutions of Sr(thd)2, Ba(thd)2 and Ti(O-i-Pr)2(thd)2 precursors. Structural and electrical properties of Pt/BST/Pt MIM structures are presented. On the base of film thickness series ranging f...

The development of analytical tools and procedures for process control is a prerequisite for the integration of high permittivity and/or ferroelectric materials in CMOS devices. The thickness and composition of perovskite oxide films were determined by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) with special emphasis on the ratio of the...

Barium strontium titanate (Ba,Sr)TiO3 (BST) thin-films on Pt-substrates were studied by transmission electron microscopy. The films show a columnar structure with the grains of 10–50 nm in diameter. These are oriented parallel to the [001] direction which in turn is parallel to the film growth direction. No amorphous intergrain regions occur. The h...

The microstructure and interfaces of SrTiO3 thin films directly deposited by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition on silicon (001) substrates were investigated by means of Bragg-diffraction contrast and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The observation of the plan-view specimens showed that the SrTiO3 films are polycrystalline wit...

The next generation of DRAM memories demands the miniaturization of the storage capacitor. The road to smaller capacitors still able to maintain a sufficient amount of charge in terms of an error free logic state recognition leads to high-k materials. (Ba,Sr)TiO3 is the most promising of these new materials, since it offers a high relative permitti...

(BaxSr1-x)TiO3 thin films were deposited on Pt electrodes in a planetary multi-wafer MOCVD reactor combined with a liquid delivery system. The nucleation behavior and the size of the stable nuclei were investigated by different SPM techniques and by XPS. Characteristic differences were observed between deposition temperatures of 565°C and 655°C, i....

(Ba x Sr 1 m x )TiO 3 thin films were deposited in a planetary multi-wafer MOCVD reactor combined with a liquid delivery system using 0.35 molar solutions of Ba(thd) 2 and Sr(thd) 2 and a 0.4 molar solution of Ti(O-i-Pr) 2 (thd) 2 . The film growth on Pt-(111) was investigated within a wide parameter field, e.g., the deposition temperature was vari...

(Ba0.7Sr0.3)TiO3 thin films with a typical thickness of 30 nm were deposited on platinized wafers in a planetary multi-wafer reactor combined with a liquid delivery system. As a direct consequence of the reactor design, we obtain high film uniformity over 6 inch wafers as well as efficiencies for the precursor incorporation as high as 40%. The comp...

We report on the properties of thin BST films which were grown in a planetary multi-wafer MOCVD reactor which handles 5 six inch wafers simultaneously. The reactor is combined with a liquid delivery system which mixes the liquid precursors from three different sources: 0.35 molar solutions of Ba(thd)2 and Sr(thd)2 and a 0.4 molar solution of Ti(O-i...

We report on the performance of a planetary multi-wafer reactor offering extremely high throughput due to the batch mode processing and a low cost of ownership. This reactor is combined with a liquid delivery system which mixes the liquid precursors from three different sources: 0.35 molar solutions of Ba(thd)2 and Sr(thd)2 and a 0.4 molar solution...