Launched in Spring 2019, the Estonian government designed an open source code repository to make software solutions built for the government freely accessible. For the first time, the source code of an AI-based application was made public via the Estonian repository, the TEXTA document analysis tool.
An open source code repository powered by the Estonian government
Since Spring 2019, Estonia has launched the first version of a government repository platform where open source software solutions developed for the government are made public and freely accessible. All the open source solutions are available on koodivaramu.eesti.ee. The long-term goal of the Koodivaramu platform is to build community-based e-state solutions and the code repository will be a cornerstone of that project.
Texta, the AI-based analysis tool
TEXTA Toolkit is a set of tools design to complete most common text analytics tasks developed by the Estonian start-up TEXTA OÜ. The software allows the user to analyse data collected from vast and/or complex databases. Its main components are a searcher application, a classification tool, a data extractor and a terminology analysis tool. The source code of the Texta toolkit is open to all and free to use on GitHub.
To develop the TEXTA toolkit, TEXTA OÜ received grants from public institutions, namely the European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme, the start-up grant of the Enterprise Estonia association and a grant from the Estonian Language Technology Programme.
In the recent years, several public administration bodies of the Estonian government have used the TEXTA toolkit. For instance, the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research used the software to audit its document management system. The software was therefore able to analyse more than 800,000 documents in order to determine which were not suitable to be publicly accessible. Another example is the use of the TEXTA software by the Estonian judicial system. TEXTA toolkit was used as an analysis engine to process the numerous documents of the registry of judicial decisions and identify the results of the lawsuits.
Boosting AI thanks to open source software solutions
One of the goals of the Estonian national action plan for the implementation of AI is the testing, commissioning, and making available by the state of base components of AI-based standard applications. Such process would speed up the implementation of AI-based solutions.
According to the Estonian Government Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Deputy Secretary-General for IT and Telecom Siim Sikkut, "Relying on common solutions in places where there's no point in reinventing the wheel has been one of the mainstays of the Estonian digital state.”