Castilla-La Mancha accelerates green reviews with AI-powered tools

The Government of Castilla-La Mancha has adopted Red Hat's AI platform to accelerate and improve its environmental impact assessment processes.

The regional authority, Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (JCCM), has chosen Red Hat OpenShift AI from the Red Hat AI portfolio to develop a generative AI-powered assistant. This system has been created to streamline the review and resolution of environmental impact assessment (EIA) files, which are part of the government's efforts to promote sustainable development.

JCCM carries out detailed EIA procedures that integrate environmental considerations into new plans and projects in sectors such as agriculture, livestock, forestry, energy and tourism. The evaluation of these files is complex, and assessment times have, in some cases, exceeded one year. In response, the government has prioritised the modernisation of its EIA processes.

The Digital Transformation Agency of Castilla-La Mancha aimed to make these procedures more efficient without compromising environmental protection. The region is already using Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus as its cloud-native application platform, and turned to Red Hat OpenShift AI for machine learning project development and AI-enabled applications. All operations are conducted in a private cloud environment to ensure sensitive data remains on-premises.

Red Hat OpenShift AI allows the government to train, deploy and manage AI-driven applications that support automation during document reviews. With the new system, PDF documents are transformed into vectors and stored in a database, enabling direct queries and error reduction. The AI assistant, which uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), is able to answer questions about specific documents, verify their content and provide summaries, supporting staff during their review and reducing the time required to resolve EIA files.

Juan Pedro de Ruz Ortega, General Director of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence at JCCM, said: "This project demonstrates how AI can be used to improve the efficiency of government processes and deliver better outcomes for citizens."

According to JCCM and Red Hat, the implementation of Red Hat OpenShift AI has produced several outcomes for the regional government. The platform has enhanced collaboration among data scientists, AI engineers and application developers by providing a consistent and unified experience. It has also improved the quality of service for citizens through faster response times and more efficient procedures.

The AI-driven platform has increased operational efficiency, enabling JCCM to process more documents at scale and reducing operational complexity by shortening the time needed to process documents by two months. In addition, the new tools have optimised productivity for government officials by making document handling more agile and effective.

The region is introducing Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to assist in automating business processes across different government teams. This is intended to further reduce manual workloads and free up time for staff to focus on other objectives. The automation platform is already in use to deploy solutions within all public libraries in Castilla-La Mancha.

Red Hat voiced its perspective on the development of AI in government and enterprise. A Red Hat spokesperson said: "The future of AI must be defined by limitless opportunity, not constrained by infrastructure silos. Red Hat sees a horizon where organizations can deploy any model, on any accelerator, across any cloud, delivering an exceptional, more consistent user experience without exorbitant costs. To unlock the true potential of gen AI investments, enterprises require a universal inference platform–a standard for more seamless, high-performance AI innovation, both today and in the years to come."

The use of Red Hat OpenShift AI and planned rollout of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform by JCCM reflects a broader trend towards the adoption of AI technology within European public administrations to improve service delivery, increase efficiency, and support sustainable development goals.