Today, we are proudly announcing a new collaboration with the Agency for Electronic Government and the Information and Knowledge Society (AGESIC), a body under the Office of the President of the Republic of Uruguay, to make public data more accessible, reliable, and usable in the age of AI.
Starting this month, the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN)’s Tech Team is working with AGESIC to prototype an integration with Uruguay’s open data catalogue that enables citizens to ask natural-language questions and receive responses traceable directly to the underlying datasets. This work runs under the AI Learning Labs initiative using the same technical architecture already being piloted with Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General (CGU).
The technical solution we are prototyping uses a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server – the same open bridge that is used in our concurrent pilot with Brazil. The MCP connects AI tools directly to trusted data sources. In this pilot, it is implemented for CKAN, a digital public good that powers most of the world’s public data portals. What changes is the environment. Uruguay brings its own digital infrastructure, its own datasets, and – crucially – its own active policy framework for responsible AI.
Building on Uruguay’s own AI and digital momentum
This partnership extends major initiatives recently launched by AGESIC that position Uruguay as an important voice in digital government policies in the region.
AGESIC is driving forward the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2024–2030 and the National Data Strategy 2030, which aim to establish the country as a regional hub for innovation, whilst ensuring the sovereign, ethical and secure use of public data. The traceable, MCP-based integration we are prototyping is precisely the kind of concrete and responsible AI initiative directly linked to the specific principles and objectives of these strategies. Together, we aim to maximise the benefits of this technology for society by considering the positive impacts and mitigating potential adverse effects, whilst developing the capabilities for the critical integration of AI into society.
“The collaboration with OKFN allows us to take the next step through conversational and verifiable access to open data,” says Gustavo Suárez, open data coordinator at AGESIC.
A regional blueprint for responsible AI integration
OKFN and the governments of Brazil and Uruguay are members of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). By running parallel pilots with two distinct national ecosystems, we are creating a reproducible blueprint for responsible AI integration with open data infrastructure with the potential to be shared broadly across the growing number of countries officially engaging with the alliance.
This solution is built to be technology-agnostic: not locked to CKAN, not locked to any single LLM. Our aim is to genuinely address traceability for AI‑generated responses and contribute to trust in public data everywhere.
“Our development practice follows the principles of #TheTechWeWant: we are building as simple as we can, slowly, in community, and around real use-cases. The goal is to develop a solution that can be plugged into the current infrastructure as frictionless as possible while, at the same time, embedding in the tool good practices for accuracy and traceability,” says Patricio Del Boca, OKFN’s Tech Lead.
Join the conversation and contribute with your expertise!
We will share and discuss the entire development process with the community at the Open Knowledge Forum. You are welcome to join the discussion and share your thoughts, as well as more initiatives bridging AI and open data. You can also email us at info@okfn.org.
Acknowledgement
We are grateful for the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation’s (PJMF) generous support and our continued partnership in enhancing digital literacy and investing in AI for the public good. Learn more about its charitable programmes here.
