With a Budget of 600 Million: Morocco Utilizes Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Public Financial Management
On Monday, the Ministry of Economy and Finance announced the launch of an international open tender for the design of a comprehensive data lab, which will include technical support services, training, and knowledge transfer related to data exploitation and the application of artificial intelligence. The project is estimated to cost 6,141,600 dirhams (approximately 614 million cents).
This project is part of a strategic vision by the Ministry of Economy and Finance aimed at harnessing the immense potential offered by big data and artificial intelligence in managing financial and economic affairs, thereby enhancing the quality of services provided to citizens and businesses and improving decision-making mechanisms.
For several years, the ministry has been digitizing its infrastructure and services, having launched various digital platforms to standardize and facilitate procedures for revenue collection, expenditure execution, budget preparation, complaint processing, and monitoring the performance of public institutions, alongside increasing transparency in the dissemination of economic and financial data.
However, according to the tender specifications, these platforms, despite their effectiveness, do not allow for optimal exploitation of the available data. Thus, the establishment of a dedicated data lab for the ministry comes as an advanced phase in the digital transformation process, aimed at maximizing available data—both structured and unstructured—and leveraging it through artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning models.
The project encompasses integrated services, including the design of the future data lab’s technical and functional architecture, identifying and documenting around 20 use cases for data, with three cases to be implemented as prototypes—one utilizing artificial intelligence—and developing a detailed roadmap for activating and operating the lab, including budget allocation and prioritization, establishing governance mechanisms for the data, and defining a clear organizational structure for the lab, alongside identifying the required human and technical competencies, and enhancing the ministry’s internal capacities through training and technical support.
In this context, a "data lab" refers to an integrated ecosystem that facilitates the experimentation, analysis, and valuation of all types of data, aimed at supporting decision-makers and achieving maximum utilization of the available information within the ministry. The ministry’s documentation on the tender outlined that the establishment of this lab aims to deliver several key outcomes, the most notable of which are improving decision-making through the aggregation and analysis of real-time, multi-source data, aligning more closely with the needs of economic actors and citizens by understanding their behaviors and aspirations, and enhancing the capacity for forecasting and rapid response to potential issues and disparities.
Additionally, it aims to improve the utilization of public resources through more accurate and effective allocation, evaluate public policies more efficiently thanks to data analysis and field data, achieve greater transparency in budgetary and public financial management, and discover new management models by intersecting data that is difficult to capture under traditional circumstances.
The tender specifications emphasized the importance of establishing a clear and institutional organizational structure for the lab, including defining roles and responsibilities, organizing relationships with other directorates within the ministry, and formalizing the files of the required competencies. Competitors are also requested to provide a comprehensive vision for developing human competencies through training and qualification programs, prioritizing the investment in internal competencies of the ministry, and determining the potential need for external expertise when necessary.
The project will also involve implementing integrated mechanisms for managing the lab’s data, including planning data sources and flows, data collection, storage, analysis, and visualization mechanisms, ensuring data security, quality, and archiving, and managing the data lifecycle from creation to disposal. These measures aim to guarantee an effective and secure working environment capable of supporting the ministry’s transition toward data-driven financial governance and innovation.
