Arcada

When Artificial Intelligence Translates the Language of Government

Amiar

7/17/20264 min read

The Official Gazette Has Always Been Public. Now It Is Becoming Readable

Every day, Portugal's Diário da República (Official Gazette) publishes new laws, regulations, decrees, ordinances, and administrative decisions. In theory, every citizen has access to them. In practice, very few people read them. The problem is not transparency—it is accessibility.

There is a fundamental difference between making information public and making it understandable. Portuguese legislation is precise and technically rigorous, but it is written primarily for legal professionals rather than for the general public. The result is a paradox: we live in a transparent democracy where much of the information that governs everyday life remains effectively inaccessible to those it affects.

This is precisely the problem that Arcada seeks to address.

Developed by members of civil society, Arcada uses large language models (LLMs) to automatically summarize legislation published in the Diário da República, allowing users to search laws by meaning rather than by exact legal terminology. Instead of navigating hundreds of pages of legal text, citizens receive clear summaries, an explanation of who may be affected, and direct links to the official legal source.

Arcada does not replace the Official Gazette. It adds a layer of interpretation between the publication of the law and the people expected to understand it.

From Publication to Understanding

Arcada fundamentally rethinks how legislation can be explored.

Rather than presenting an endless chronological archive of legal documents, the platform allows users to browse legislation through multiple filters and search methods. Users can view laws published during a specific week, month, or year, or focus on particular policy areas such as taxation, employment, healthcare, education, environmental policy, public administration, justice, or the economy.

Search is semantic rather than purely textual. Users do not need to know a decree number or legal terminology. A simple question or topic entered in natural language is enough to retrieve relevant legislation.

Each result includes an AI-generated summary explaining the main changes introduced by the law, identifying who may be affected, indicating when it comes into force, and linking directly to the official text published in the Diário da República.

In practice, Arcada introduces two layers that official publication alone does not provide: discovery, helping citizens find relevant legislation, and understanding, helping them quickly determine whether a legal document deserves deeper reading.

It is not simply a new way of reading legislation.

It is a new way of navigating the State.

AI as Democratic Literacy Infrastructure

Much of today's debate around artificial intelligence focuses on automation, content generation, or the risks posed by generative models.

Arcada points in a different direction.

Rather than creating new information, it makes existing public information significantly easier to understand.

This distinction matters.

Political science and institutional economics have long recognized that democratic quality depends not only on public access to information but also on citizens' ability to understand it. Participating in public consultations, signing petitions, following legislative processes, engaging in citizens' assemblies, or simply understanding government decisions requires meaningful access to legislation.

If the law remains understandable only to specialists, formal transparency does not automatically become informed participation.

Projects such as Arcada reduce the informational costs of engaging with public institutions. Artificial intelligence becomes less a productivity tool and more an infrastructure for democratic literacy, bringing legislation closer to the citizens whose lives it shapes.

When Innovation Comes from Civil Society

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Arcada is not technological but institutional.

The platform was not developed by a government ministry, a digital transformation agency, or a public innovation office. It emerged from civil society, built by people who identified a public problem and applied contemporary AI tools to solve it.

That deserves attention.

Over the past decade, governments—including Portugal's—have invested heavily in digital public services, information systems, and administrative modernization. Public spending on digital transformation has steadily increased, alongside the number of institutions dedicated to improving public administration.

Yet a significant gap remains between publishing information and making it genuinely understandable.

Arcada demonstrates that the primary barrier is no longer technological. The tools capable of summarizing, organizing, and contextualizing legislation already exist. The more important question is institutional: why are citizens and independent developers still the ones building many of the tools that improve access to public information?

This observation is not a criticism of government transparency. On the contrary, Arcada is only possible because Portugal already publishes legislation openly and systematically.

Instead, it highlights an opportunity.

Civil society is proving capable of creating digital public goods quickly, creatively, and at relatively low cost. That capacity is itself a democratic asset.

At the same time, it raises an important question: should essential tools for legislative literacy depend primarily on voluntary civic initiatives? Or should governments actively integrate and support these innovations, ensuring their continuity, public accountability, and universal accessibility?

The Limits of Artificial Intelligence

Arcada's creators are transparent about the platform's limitations.

AI-generated summaries are not official legal interpretations and may contain inaccuracies. For that reason, every summary links directly to the original legislation published in the Diário da República, allowing users to verify the information themselves.

This distinction is crucial.

Artificial intelligence serves as a guide to public information—not as a substitute for legal interpretation or for the official legal text itself.

As governments increasingly explore AI in public administration, this approach offers an important principle: AI should augment institutional transparency rather than replace it.

More Than an AI Summarizer

Arcada illustrates one of the most promising applications of artificial intelligence—not generating more content, but making existing public knowledge genuinely accessible.

For decades, digital government focused on putting information online.

The next stage may be ensuring that citizens can actually understand it.

If that happens, platforms like Arcada will become more than technological projects. They will become part of democratic infrastructure: systems that reduce barriers to public knowledge, strengthen civic participation, and narrow the distance between legislation and the people expected to live under it.

Artificial intelligence does not change the law.

But it can profoundly change how citizens access, understand, and engage with it.