The OECD.AI Policy Navigator

The three agencies Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH (aws), the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) offer funding for basic research, applied research and its entrepreneurial implementation under the title ‘AI Mission Austria’ (AIM AT). The funding initiative was implemented for 2022 and 2023 with funds from the Fonds Zukunft Österreich (FZÖ) (FFG, 2024[16]).

DaFNE (Database for Research on Sustainable Development) is an online platform, used to manage and publish nationally funded research projects. Research results are stored there in the form of report files (PDF). To facilitate broad and easy access to these results for multiple stakeholder groups, a chatbot was developed to support an efficient information retrieval. This chatbot is a text-based dialogue system, based on a vector database and LLM, which only accesses publicly available projects.

Austria has established a “Digital Skills Initiative” (Digitale Kompetenzoffensive) as an intersectional cooperation between five federal ministries (BKA, BMKOES, BMAW, BMF and BMBWF). The initiative focuses on the development and coordination of measures for digital literacy and skills. Under the umbrella of the initiative, the Digital Competencies and Skills strategy outlines how Austria is going to achieve increased digital competencies among the citizens.

The Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy is planning to establish an AI observatory.

Austria’s Programme for AI Literacy and Skills is being developed to improve AI knowledge and digital skills across the population. It focuses on groups with lower digital literacy, such as the elderly and rural residents, and promotes gender diversity in AI skills. The programme aims to broaden Austria’s pool of IT and AI experts.