Developer | Ministry of Foreign Affairs |
Project operator | Ministry of Digital Governance |
Budget | € 19,838,709.68 excluding VAT |
What is the object of the project?
The object of the project “Digitization of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs” is briefly:
- to create a Conceptual Search Artificial Intelligence Operational Tool.
- to correlate the relevant documents from all the material in the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- the Services involved individual parts of the project such as cataloging, digitization/microphotography, Documentation, Intelligent Character Recognition (OCR, ICR), training of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms, actions necessary for the digital conversion and enrichment of the content of the Historical Archive in order to achieve, through training, the implementation of the Conceptual Search Artificial Intelligence Operational Tool.
In this category, the following will be implemented:
- Digital archiving – digitization of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 65,000,000 pages of documents of various sizes from its conventional format (physical archive) to digital format.
- Sorting of Unsorted Archive.
- Microphotographing of the archive of 65,000,000 pages for the purpose of its safe long-term preservation and storage. Digitization includes both the scanning of the selected files, with an indicative number of 65,000,000 pages of documents in the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the cataloging and entry/documentation of necessary search metadata and their key information in a specialized digital file management system, in such a way as to create the New Digital Historical and Diplomatic Archive of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive Service (YDIA) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will be able to be used from now on to carry out research on the data held by the Operator.
- development of an information system for the handling of the digitized material, as well as every new document-evidence that will be added to the digital collection over time.
- supply of necessary modern ICT equipment, which will accommodate all the necessary structural components of the requested system.
What is the purpose of implementation of the project?
The purpose of this project is to create an Artificial Intelligence Conceptual Search Operational Tool which, in combination with the digitization and correlation of the relevant documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ archival material, will ensure direct access to information, in the shortest period of time in whatever length of time required for search, supported by conceptual searches based on modern artificial intelligence tools.
Thus, it will be the central tool for improving the administrative function and service quality of the services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as upgrading the operational level of the services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with digital transformation and the utilization of cutting-edge technologies.
The digital upgrade of the YDIA systems and the digitization of the historical archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will improve the work of the staff and lead to the saving of financial resources, will minimize the time of processing requests, will allow access of authorized users to data, and will also facilitate access to researched information and, ultimately, to the relevant policymaking.
In particular, among the actions to be implemented are:
- Development and Customization of a Conceptual Search Artificial Intelligence Operational Tool.
- Digitization of all the material of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, comprised of 65,000,000 pages of documents of various sizes.
- Sorting of Unsorted Archive containing 100,000 files (estimated).
- Microphotographing 65,000,000 pages (Microphotography Feasibility)
- Processing digitized material with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) technologies and converting the typed content of documents into editable digital text
- Analytical and extensive Documentation (classification) of the content of each sub-folder by scientific and specialized personnel in order to document all the information it includes, so as to make the conceptual search as successful as possible.
- Provision of storage space and other hardware and software infrastructure where the Historical Archive will be hosted.
- Supply, installation and configuration of ready-to-use digital repository software.
The specific platform will contain the complete catalog of archival material of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, i.e. the source for finding files of digitized or non-digitized material, which will facilitate the authorized departments of the Ministry and researchers who have permission to access non-digitized material in the Reading Room of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive Service.
Therefore, the digitization of the archival material of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is part of the effort to upgrade public administration services that will be provided completely and exclusively electronically.
What are the benefits from the implementation of the project?
The digital transformation of the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will ensure immediate access to the information in the shortest period of time in whatever length of time the search requires with the support of conceptual searches based on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence tools. It will be part of the effort to upgrade public administration services that will be provided completely and exclusively electronically.