A National Action Plan for the advancement of Human Language Technologies (HTL) in Spain.
Name in original language
Plan de Impulso de las Tecnologías del Lenguaje
Initiative overview
The Spanish National Plan for Advancement of Language Technologies was introduced in late 2015 as part of the Spanish Digital Agenda conisdering different perspectives:1- HLT Strategic Potential at the National, European and International levels:- At the National level, the multilingualism in Spain is a context fostering HLT to enable industry and public administration to offer their services in the official and co-official languages.- The Spanish National Plan for Advancement of Language Technologies was intorduced late 2015 as part of the Spanish Digital Agenda within the context of the European Digital Single Market, given the curcial role these technologies can play in enable cross-language, cross-border and cross-sector exchange.- At the international level, the Spanish language is one of the top major languages spoken world wide. Thus, advances in Spanish language resources and technologies would improve the internationalization of the Spanish HLT industry in the Iber-American Market. 2- Industrial and Economic Perspective:- HLT sector is growing rapidly in the large multinationals. However, support is needed for the innovative start-ups, spin-off and SMEs in the sector given the role they can play in the national economy. Thus, Plan TL considers this line as one of its principal actions. 3- Legal Perspective:Building large Language Resources is highly benefiting from legislations concerning Open Public Data. However, on the other hand, building resources should respect the Data Protection such as the GDPR.In the last two years, main changes direclty affected the action lines of the Language Techonology Plans:1. Artificial Intelligence Strategies: At the international, EU and national levels, a number of Artificial Intelligence Strategies were published. Given the role of HLT as an indispensable component of AI, the Language Technologies Plan (Plan TL) had to join efforts with these efforts and initiatives towards AI strategies.2. Connecting Europe Facilities Programme and the participation of the Plan TL in different projects funded by CEF contributed in going further steps towards applying results of research and academic in offering services on a wider scale. Moreover, it helped creating more synergies with other EU stakeholders.3. Initiatives on Open Science such as the European Science Cloud Initiatives were in the core of one of the Flagship Projects concerning R&D&I Policy Making where HLT are introduced to landscape the RDI space in patents, publications, projects, grants, etc.4. European initiatives for Interoperability in Public Administration also had an impact on the action lines of the Plan TL since interoperable datasets and components are crucial for the advancement of the HLT industry and the Public Services.5. SuperComputing and High Performance Computers are also changing the panorama in the last two years.
Name of responsible organisation (in English)
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation (MINECO)
