The Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is the agency responsible for developing and regulating the agri-food sector in Ireland. To carry out its mission and manage the €1 billion in payments they have to make each year to 120,000 farmers, the DAFM is banking on artificial intelligence. A platform has just been launched to meet these requirements in this country, which is one of those where companies use AI the most, as shown by data publishedby Eurostat.

Finding an automatic solution to farmers’ requirements

The Basic Payment System (BPS) is a platform that processes a lot of personal and sensitive information in order to grant or not, a payment to a farmer. Unfortunately, this platform is not automated: the process is manual, considered rather slow and not very operational. As part of a digital transition, DAFM has developed an efficient, fast and easy-to-use infrastructure.

Gareth Sheeran, technical architect for DAFM, put his entire team to work to create a machine learning platform for farmers to apply for grants and speed up payment processes. With the collaboration of Red Hat and Version 1, the Smart Text solution was developed.

A machine learning platform

Smart Text is a machine learning solution for automating grant application processes in accordance with the RGPD regulation. The platform uses character recognition, text analysis and NLP to scan documents and images or search for confidential information. The latter are only delivered to persons authorised by the DAFM, who can then examine their content and take appropriate action.

Farmers can now easily download documents such as certificates and check the status of their grant applications. Gareth Sheeran commented on his team’s ability to develop an application such as Smart Text:

“We have been able to develop applications and functionality incredibly quickly compared to what we were able to offer before the platform was introduced, which means we are helping to ensure that the work of DAFM can serve Irish farmers for many years to come.”

Expanding AI solutions within the Irish government

The creation of the platform has inspired the Irish government to also opt for the use of embedded AI systems to improve its administrative tasks. The Red Hat OpenShift cloud content platform was designed to optimize the government’s data center. Red Hat 3Scale API Management software is used to develop platforms and accelerate certain business processes while improving the user experience.

Translated from Irlande : Comment le gouvernement utilise l’intelligence artificielle pour faciliter des tâches administratives