Gran Canaria’s Public Sector AI Innovation Hub
The GobLab Gran Canaria Innovation Laboratory is part of an island ecosystem transforming how the island’s public administrations approach artificial intelligence. More than just a technological space, the GobLab is a meeting point for experimentation, learning, and sharing resources aimed at improving administrative agility, service efficiency, and institutional responsiveness. Its primary mission is to drive a model of public modernisation based on responsible AI that can be replicated in any municipality or public entity across the Canary Islands.
A Collaborative Response to Common Challenges
This ecosystem stems from a reality common to all local administrations: the need to incorporate emerging technologies to address growing challenges in citizen services, document management, planning, transparency, and service quality improvement. Unlike centralised models or those based on large infrastructures, Gran Canaria has adopted its own approach that starts from the local level and relies on island-wide collaboration.
Shared Prototypes and Community Utility
The Laboratory acts as an open space where demonstrative prototypes are developed to show, in practice, how artificial intelligence can solve frequent administrative problems. Each pilot case functions as a shared resource that can be studied, reused, or adapted by any town council or public service. The key to this approach is community utility: prototypes are built with the intention of serving as a reference for institutions managing similar realities, from large municipalities to smaller-scale administrations.
As these resources are made publicly available, an island-wide innovation network is generated where different administrations can observe real examples, learn from the processes followed, and transfer that knowledge to their own projects. This fosters a model of horizontal collaboration, removed from hierarchical structures, and reinforces the idea that public modernisation is a collective task nourished by the sum of shared experiences.
Distributed Mentorship and Open Models
Furthermore, the island ecosystem relies on a logic of distributed mentorship. The Laboratory promotes training and support sessions involving public officials, technicians from various specialities, municipal departments, and essential service personnel. These sessions ensure responsible AI is understood from within the public organisation, not as an external element, but as a useful tool integrated into daily processes. This approach facilitates the creation of an administrative culture more open to innovation and reduces the gap between technological discourse and daily management.
Another element contributing to the innovation ecosystem is the commitment to open models and technological sovereignty. Several prototypes developed by the Laboratory are based on open-source AI systems installed in controlled environments, guaranteeing high security levels, protecting public data, and making it easier for other administrations to adopt them without relying on proprietary licences. This line of work reinforces institutional autonomy and allows innovation to advance with accessible resources.
Transparency, Ethics, and a Resilient Future
The island ecosystem is also characterised by its focus on transparency and ethics. The Laboratory integrates principles of human oversight, impact assessment, and data protection in all its experimentation phases. This responsible approach helps strengthen institutional trust and promotes the use of AI aligned with public service values.
The combination of demonstrative prototypes, open methodology, mentorship sessions, and the use of responsible AI models has allowed Gran Canaria to develop, in a very short time, a recognisable, dynamic, and growing public innovation framework. The administrations participating in this environment share learnings, exchange experiences, and find solutions for common challenges, building a more resilient model adapted to the territory’s needs.
The GobLab thus integrates into an island-wide vision that drives public sector modernisation collaboratively. Its role as an open laboratory ensures innovation is not limited to a single body but flows to the entire set of institutions that make up the Canary Islands public administration. This logic of cooperation makes Gran Canaria an example of how artificial intelligence can be used responsibly, accessibly, and for the public good, strengthening the quality of public services and providing useful tools to tackle contemporary societal challenges.
Project Background
This article is part of the outreach activities of the GobLab Gran Canaria project, which takes place under the Strategic Plan for Governance and Public Innovation (PEGIP) of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria. Fully funded by the Cabildo, this project seeks to boost innovation in public service management by promoting the use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence. The administration of the GobLab Gran Canaria project is managed by the FundaciĆ³n Emprende Canarias. You can visit the Innovation Laboratory website and that of the FundaciĆ³n Emprende for more information.
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