Blog · Published · Updated
AI in public offices: pilot scope and budget
Short answer
The first AI pilot in a public office can work on published instructions: the system finds the right description and drafts the information, which an employee checks. Administrative decisions stay with people. At Syntalith training costs from €1,150 net a day, and an app from €3,000 net. At 800 questions from residents a month it pays back in 0.8 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- analysis with an engineer and a free prototype
- €0
- team in ChatGPT or Claude, up to 10 people
- from €1,150
- automation, agent or application for one process
- from €3,000
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
AI in public administration: statistics 2026
0.8 mo.
payback of a €3,000 system at 800 questions from residents a month: €4,653 of work today, €704 with checking and the model. Scenario.
72%
According to Eurostat (2025), 72% of people aged 16 to 74 in the EU used a public authority website or app in the previous 12 months.
Source: Eurostat, digital economy and society statistics, households and individuals (2025) ↗
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies using AI say that people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
48.8%
According to Eurostat (2025), 48.8% of EU enterprises that considered AI and did not use it named concerns about data protection and privacy.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees used AI.
Source: Eurostat, 20% of EU enterprises use AI technologies (2025) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
First check the tools you have
If an employee cannot find a case, the problem may lie in the metadata or the permissions. In Poland, the search guide for the EZD RP document system shows searching for cases, documents and letters by attributes, and access limits that depend on permissions. Before you build an extra search tool, go through the same task with the administrator and a subject-matter employee.
An employee cannot find a case in the document system
filling in metadata and views
€0
Employees have a tool but need practice
team training
from €1,150
An answer needs several scattered instructions gathered
an app on published instructions
from €3,000
A decision on a resident's case
stays with the employee
no AI
Poland's Ministry of Digital Affairs announced in August 2025 a pilot of the PLLuM model in Częstochowa, among other things for writing letters and summarising documents. It is a publicly described direction of work, with no proof of a result and no ready solution for every office.
A task that can be checked
In the exercise, an employee prepares information on where residents can hand in a form. One published instruction gives the current service point, the other an archived address. The result should point to the right document and keep the condition on how the form is handed in. The employee judges the text before it is used.
What should remain after the AI pilot
| Result | How the office accepts it |
|---|---|
| Description of the task | It is clear who uses the result and what they check |
| Set of materials | Every source has a version and an owner |
| Example answers | A correct result, an omission and a missing basis are visible |
| Assessment of the work | The review time and the corrections needed are recorded |
| Decision on the next scope | The limits, the cost and the person maintaining the solution are known |
What an AI pilot in a public office costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 800 questions × 10 min = 133.3 h (€4,653)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €698
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €6.43
- Cost of one case
- €5.82 today, €0.88 with the system
- Saving
- €3,949 a month
Payback of €3,000
0.8 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 2,500 input tokens and 400 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
Add to the cost the preparation of the sources, the time of the employees who judge the result and the administration. A local setup adds a server and the upkeep of the environment, an outside service adds licences and terms of use. According to Eurostat (2025), 48.8% of EU enterprises that considered AI and did not use it named concerns about data protection and privacy. That is why we settle the processing rules before the first test.
A local model or a cloud service
The office chooses between a model running on its own server and a cloud service. A local model keeps the data in-house, but needs hardware, updates and a person who maintains it. A cloud service needs no hardware, but it needs a data processing agreement, an assessment of where the data is processed and terms of use. With published instructions the difference in risk is small, with case files it is large. The name of a national model alone settles neither the cost, the quality nor compliance, so we compare on the same set of questions.
Ending the trial and maintenance
- Export of the results and materials after the trial ends
- Removing access and handling the data
- Who updates the instructions after the law changes
- Who judges the correctness of answers during the pilot
- The procurement procedure, set by the office with its specialists
Without a person who updates the instructions, an answer that was correct on the day of acceptance rests on outdated material a few months later. The scope for public bodies is described on the AI in public administration page. For the call, prepare a public description of the task and the person who will judge the correctness of the answers.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: public administration
We run the same count for your office in the free analysis.
€4,653
a month for checking 800 applications
Payback: 0.8 mo.
10 minutes to check that an application is complete and write the letter about gaps and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading a document in our case file system (about €0.0002) plus a description of what is missing (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 2,000 + 300 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
