Stimulating the Uptake of AI in Public Administrations: Overview and Comparison of AI Strategies of European Member States

There is an interest in governments to stimulate the uptake of AI technologies within their administrations. However, little is still known about the policy initiatives countries are taking to facilitate the development and usage of AI within governmental organizations. This paper analyses, through the lens of policy instruments, existing AI strategies of European Member States to give a first overview of the different policy actions proposed to tackle adoption challenges in the public sector. Our findings suggest that there are significant differences between the number and type of policy actions taken and that many of the countries favour the exploitation of soft policy instruments over harder, regulatory approaches or active funding and other financial incentives.