OPA — Piauí's AI-Assisted Digital Participatory Budget

OPA (Orcamento Participativo Amigo) is a recurring state-level participatory budgeting programme run by the Government of Piaui, Brazil, through SEPLAN and the State Secretariat for Artificial Intelligence (SIA), created in 2023, letting residents of five municipalities - Teresina, Parnaiba, Picos, Piripiri and Floriano - submit and vote on state-budget investment proposals.

Use AI to speed up and improve the technical, budgetary and documentary screening of raw citizen submissions into a viable shortlist for public vote.

For the 2025-2026 edition, technology partner Colab introduced AI into the proposal-screening stage. The cycle drew 273,890 valid votes from 1,311 proposals submitted by 564 community entities, of which 849 were validated as viable and 128 were funded.

Colab reports the AI screening reduced proposal-analysis time by 40% and produced R$1.75 million in direct cost savings, while the voting platform maintained 99.98% availability during peak turnout. Since OPA's creation, more than R$211 million has been allocated to citizen-selected projects across all editions.

The exact AI methodology used in proposal screening has not been published in technical detail, so its precision and error rate cannot be independently verified beyond the vendor's own figures.