Explainable and transparent artificial intelligence for public policymaking

Nowadays public policymakers are offered with opportunities to take data -driven evidence -based decisions by analyzing the very large volumes of policy -related data that are generated through different channels (e.g., e -services, mobile apps, social media). Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) tehcnologies ease and automate the analysis of large policy -related datasets, which helps policymakers to realize a shift toward data -driven decisions. Nevertheless, the deployment and use of AI tools for public policy development is also associated with significant technical, political, and operation challenges. For instance, AI -based policy development solutions must be transparent and explainable to policymakers, while at the same time adhering to the mandates of emerging regulations such as the AI Act of the European Union. This paper introduces some of the main technical, operational, regulatory compliance challenges of AI -based policymaking. Accordingly, it introduces technological solutions for overcoming them, including: (i) a reference architecture for AI -based policy development, (ii) a virtualized cloud -based tool for the specification and implementation of ML -based data -driven policies, (iii) a ML framework that enables the development of transparent and explainable ML models for policymaking, and (iv) a set of guidelines for using the introduced technical solutions to achieve regulatory compliance. The paper ends up illustrating the validation and use of the introduced solutions in real -life public policymaking cases for various local governments. Policy Significance Statement This paper illustrates a collection of AI solutions that can empower data scientists and policymakers to use AI/ML for the development of explainable and transparent policies in line with the emerging European regulation for AI. It discusses the challenges of AI -based policymaking, along with solutions that alleviate these challenges. The introduced solutions have been validated in the development of various data -driven, evidence -based policies for local governments.