Traceable AI Answers for Public Data

Over the course of four months in 2026, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s AI Learning Labs developed an AI assistant that lets you “talk” directly to public data using everyday language, ensuring every answer has a clear trail back to the source record.

We did it in partnership with two national governments —Brazil and Uruguay—, under the umbrella of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), to become a reproducible and scalable reference for responsible and transparent AI integration with open data infrastructure.

Public data belongs to everyone, but finding the answers you need often requires navigating complex portals or mastering technical spreadsheets. Unlike standard AI chatbots that can sometimes invent facts (hallucinate), this assistant acts as a technical bridge directly to official open datasets, ensuring full data provenance and traceability. How it works ↗

Learn more and get involved:

Field Guide: Connecting AI to Government Data — A publication by the Open Knowledge Foundation on how to increase accuracy, improve provenance and build trust in AI responses. Download it here.

Run a pilot — Interested in testing this? Reach out to us at info@okfn.org.

Join the conversation — Have lessons or questions from your own work? Connect with other practitioners in our Open Knowledge Forum.

Acknowledgement:

Patrick J. McGovern Foundation

This project has been made possible thanks to the generous support of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF). We are grateful for our ongoing partnership in promoting digital literacy and investing in AI for the public good.

Learn more about its funding programmes here.