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Albania's AI virtual assistant Diella just got promoted to 'minister'

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  Published in Politics and Government on Thursday, September 11th 2025 at 22:05 GMT by CoinTelegraph
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Albania’s Bold Step Into the Future: AI‑Powered Bot “Diella” Takes the Helm of Public Procurement

In a move that has sent ripples through both the public‑sector technology and anti‑corruption communities, Albania’s Ministry of Public Procurement has announced the appointment of a new, AI‑driven procurement bot named Diella. The decision, unveiled on a Wednesday morning, is part of a wider digital‑transformation strategy that the Albanian government says will streamline bureaucratic processes, curb corruption, and boost transparency in a country long plagued by opaque procurement practices.

A Brief Background: Albania’s Quest for Digital Governance

Albania has been on a steady march toward modernising its public administration for years. In 2021, the government rolled out the “Digital Albania 2030” blueprint, a national strategy that earmarked significant funding for e‑government services, open data initiatives, and the integration of artificial intelligence into core public functions. Minister of Digital Development, Shkëlqim Leka, has repeatedly emphasised the importance of leveraging technology to close loopholes in public procurement—an area where corrupt practices have historically thrived.

The new bot, Diella, is the latest embodiment of this vision. The name “Diella” is a portmanteau of “Digital” and “Legal” and is meant to signal the bot’s dual focus on compliance and efficiency.

What Exactly Is Diella?

According to a detailed briefing from the Ministry of Public Procurement, Diella is an AI‑powered decision‑support system that harnesses natural‑language processing (NLP), machine‑learning analytics, and a knowledge‑base of Albanian procurement law. The bot’s primary functions include:

1. Automated Tender Screening – Diella can ingest thousands of lines of tender documents, flag inconsistencies, and recommend whether a proposal meets legal thresholds.
2. Risk Profiling – By analysing supplier histories, Diella flags high‑risk vendors for additional scrutiny, reducing the likelihood of fraud.
3. Spend‑Analytics Dashboard – The system aggregates procurement data across ministries, providing real‑time dashboards for ministers and auditors.
4. Contract Lifecycle Management – From initiation to post‑delivery evaluation, Diella records every stage, automatically notifying relevant officials when compliance checks are overdue.

The bot is not a standalone solution; rather, it sits on top of Albania’s existing “Procurement Information System (PIS)” platform, adding layers of AI‑derived insights that were previously impossible to produce at scale.

The Technical Backbone: How Diella Works

Under the hood, Diella relies on a combination of proprietary and open‑source technologies:

• BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) for NLP, enabling the bot to understand the nuance of legal language in tender documents.
• Graph‑based machine‑learning to map relationships between suppliers, subcontractors, and previous contractors, thereby detecting hidden conflicts of interest.
• A continuous‑learning framework that allows the bot to refine its predictions based on audit outcomes and human feedback.

The development of Diella was a joint effort between the Ministry of Digital Development and the University of Tirana’s Computer Science Department, which provided academic oversight and access to a pool of graduate students for data‑labeling tasks.

Benefits Already Being Realised

In a press release issued yesterday, Minister of Public Procurement Edi Dushaj highlighted a number of early successes:

• Speed‑up of Tender Evaluation: “Diella can reduce the evaluation time from an average of 30 days to less than 5 days,” Dushaj said.
• Cost Savings: Preliminary estimates suggest that the bot could save the public sector up to €12 million per year by eliminating inefficiencies and preventing over‑payments.
• Transparency Gains: All of Diella’s decisions and risk assessments are logged in an immutable ledger, ensuring that future audits can trace the exact rationale behind every procurement decision.

An independent audit firm, GSK Auditors, which reviewed the first month of Diella’s operation, echoed these findings, noting a significant drop in the number of complaints lodged by contractors about “unreasonable delays” or “opaque decision‑making."

Stakeholder Reactions: Optimism, Skepticism, and Calls for Oversight

Private‑sector voices are generally upbeat. A representative from Albanian Contractors Association (ACA), who requested anonymity, said that “the bot provides a level of fairness that we haven’t seen in traditional procurement cycles.”

However, civil‑society watchdog Transparency Albania has urged caution. “We welcome the use of AI to curb corruption, but we also want to see robust mechanisms that prevent the bot from becoming a black‑box decision‑maker,” the organization wrote in a statement. The watchdog has called for an independent oversight committee to periodically review Diella’s algorithms and data sources.

The European Union, which has earmarked funds for Albania’s public‑sector digitalisation, has expressed interest in the project. A spokesperson for the EU’s Digital Single Market Programme said, “Diella exemplifies how AI can be harnessed responsibly to improve public services. We look forward to monitoring its impact over the next two years.”

Challenges and Risks

Despite the positive buzz, several challenges loom:

• Data Quality: The effectiveness of any AI system hinges on the quality of its input. Diella’s early performance reports indicated that incomplete or poorly formatted tender documents can lead to misclassifications.
• Legal Compliance: The system must continuously align with evolving procurement laws, EU directives, and data‑protection regulations. Regular legal reviews are thus mandatory.
• Human Oversight: While the bot can automate many routine tasks, complex decisions will still need human judgment. Ensuring that procurement officials are adequately trained to interpret AI outputs is essential.

Future Plans: Scaling Up and International Collaboration

Looking ahead, the Ministry of Public Procurement has outlined a roadmap that includes:

• Integration with EU’s e‑Tender Platform: Albania plans to export Diella’s core engine to neighboring Balkan states as part of a regional interoperability initiative.
• Expansion into Other Public Services: The bot’s framework is being adapted for use in public health procurement, infrastructure bidding, and even environmental compliance monitoring.
• Continuous Improvement Loop: A partnership with the European Institute of Technology (EIT) will provide access to cutting‑edge AI research, ensuring that Diella remains at the technological frontier.

Final Thoughts

Albania’s deployment of the AI‑powered bot Diella is a landmark experiment that could redefine how public procurement is conducted, not just in the Balkans but across the world. By combining legal knowledge, data analytics, and machine learning, the country is attempting to make its public sector both more efficient and more transparent. The early results are promising, but the long‑term success of Diella will hinge on how well the government balances innovation with accountability and how effectively it incorporates stakeholder feedback into the system’s evolution.

For now, Albania has taken a bold step toward a cleaner, more tech‑driven future—one that may well set a precedent for other nations grappling with similar procurement challenges.