Digital approaches to fiscal reporting

Digital approaches to fiscal reporting

The Commission is supporting five beneficiary EU Countries  – Austria, Finland, France, Hungary and Sweden – in harnessing AI to develop innovative fiscal reporting approaches.

Context

In today's evolving fiscal environment, EU Member States are working to enhance their fiscal reporting and communication, building on past transparency reforms and leveraging a wealth of available fiscal and performance data. Yet significant challenges persist: fragmented databases; manual and time-consuming processes for data collection, verification and reporting; and untapped potential of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). 

Addressing these challenges would strengthen Member States' capacity to provide timely, trusted and user-focused public finance information to diverse stakeholder groups – including parliamentarians, citizens and civil servants – while reducing operational costs. It would enhance governments' ability to communicate their fiscal situation, policy choices and performance results in the context of their mediumterm fiscal plans (MTFPs) under the new EU economic governance framework, helping articulate the rationale for proposed measures, strengthen stakeholder buy-in, and better explain how MTFPs address long-term fiscal sustainability concerns. 

Support to be delivered

The Digital Approaches to Fiscal Reporting project will examine how five beneficiary EU Member States – Austria, Finland, France, Hungary and Sweden – can harness AI to develop innovative fiscal reporting approaches. The project comprises two main phases: use case identification, and prototype and proof-of-concept development. 

The first phase will assess fiscal reporting users' needs and expectations while identifying each country's unique challenges and most relevant AI use cases. A feasibility study will provide both a general analysis of the state of AI in fiscal reporting and individual analyses of potential use cases for each country. 

The second phase will develop implementation roadmap proposals for selected use cases, based on prototypes and proofs-of-concept. This will enable participating Member States to take next steps beyond this project, including pilot implementations and ultimately full-scale deployments.

Expected results

This project aims to deepen administrations' understanding of how AI can enhance fiscal reporting systems; strengthen the efficiency, transparency and accessibility of fiscal reporting in participating countries; and facilitate future implementation of pilots based on prototypes and proof-of-concept applications. Over the longer term, these efforts are expected to support the implementation and communication of ongoing fiscal reforms in each country by enabling more timely, accurate and accessible fiscal information for policymakers and the public. For some participating countries, improved fiscal reporting capabilities will also contribute to achieving key objectives set out in their national recovery and resilience plans, particularly those related to digital transformation and strengthened public financial management.