Implementation of the Smart City project has begun. One of the most important investments in the field of public safety, the project aims to transform the way risks are prevented and managed in Albania through Artificial Intelligence and an integrated monitoring system.

The first phase of the project covers 20 schools in Tirana, selected on the basis of student numbers, population density and the intensity of activity in the surrounding areas. This investment establishes a new safety model for students, teachers, parents and the community, shifting the focus from responding after an incident to real-time prevention.

The new system uses Artificial Intelligence to analyse potentially dangerous situations in real time and immediately alert operational monitoring centres. The technology will enable the identification of dangerous objects, the tracking of vehicles involved in criminal activity, the location of wanted persons, as well as the intelligent monitoring of various violations, significantly increasing the effectiveness of the State Police response.

Attending the presentation of the project, Prime Minister Edi Rama described it as a systemic response by the state to security challenges, stressing that the project was conceived as a reflection and a concrete commitment following the tragic incident at Fan Noli School.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama:

Hello everyone!

Today, everyone has forgotten the tragic killing of a student from Fan Noli School, which shocked the entire country and created a state of profound psychological turmoil, fuelled by the different versions of the event, the extreme politicisation of the death and blood-soaked journalism. Meanwhile, the State Police and, naturally, through the State Police, the Ministry of Education and the Government were targeted by all manner of speculation, accusations, fabrications and falsehoods, which persisted for quite some time and caused considerable suffering to the family members, as well as to public opinion as a whole.

I have not forgotten it, unlike all those who used, misused and exploited that tragedy to the very end, because I remember it every day as I follow this very project, which is my response and our response to that tragedy.

A state cannot be judged by everything that happens, because even in the most developed countries, with the most established institutional traditions, the most sophisticated administrative systems and the longest histories of building a culture of statehood, events sometimes occur that shock public opinion as a whole. A state, however, is judged by how it responds to everything that happens, and our response in this case is a systemic one. In honour of the memory of an innocent victim whose death should never have occurred, it will help ensure that many children who may one day potentially be at risk suffer no consequences, precisely because this systemic response will leave behind a sophisticated technological mechanism that will combine the efforts of people across the institutions with the unrivalled capabilities of artificial intelligence, thereby taking prevention to an entirely new level.

Today, we have begun precisely with the heart of the project: safety in schools. The first 20 schools were selected on the basis of student density, population density in the surrounding area, the intensity of nearby activity and, of course, the need to test the model in these 20 schools so that we can draw all the necessary conclusions before proceeding with the subsequent phases.

I believe that today all parents whose children attend school should feel reassured and relieved by the fact that the Government, contrary to how it is portrayed in the daily life of social media channels and in the sleepless daily existence of the algorithm, is a body that says what it does and does what it says. Naturally, everything takes time.

The Minister also spoke about the obstacles the project has faced. There is no project that does not encounter obstacles, whether foreseeable or unforeseen. But today we have reached the point at which the project comes to life, and from now on its expansion throughout the entire territory will not stop. It marks a new historic phase in the state’s efforts to raise the management of public safety to another level, ensuring that many issues which, until now, we have addressed solely through human observation and human resources will also be monitored with the support of artificial intelligence, not only in schools, but on every road in the country and within communities as well.

The entire project has been designed so that the system provides real-time alerts about risk. It will not, as the Minister said, merely store information that then has to be retrieved by opening the system and extracting it after the event has already occurred.

To give just one example, if a knife is taken out of a pocket in any public place, not only in a school but also on the street, the system immediately sends an alert to the monitoring centre. The situation may be entirely harmless, but it may also be dangerous.

If a wanted person today has a strong possibility of remaining hidden during the search process, the system will make it almost impossible for the Police, when responding, not to know where to proceed.

The pattern of vehicles being used to commit criminal acts and then being found burnt several kilometres from the crime scene will no longer be possible, because the system will detect the vehicle before it stops and report its location.

Likewise, the painful practice of stopping vehicles on the road for checks, which may then be accompanied by improper exchanges between the police officer and the driver, will no longer occur. Although we have improved the process, it still has its shortcomings. The system will immediately alert the centre when a vehicle with unpaid obligations exits a car park and enters the road, stating exactly where it is located.

Combined with another element that is currently being completed, namely that body cameras will be connected to the centre, making it entirely impossible to manipulate their use, this will also ensure that the ethical relationship between a police officer and a citizen, whether in a vehicle or on the street, is addressed systemically. This does not mean that nothing will ever happen again, because nowhere has such a result been achieved. However, the level of prevention will increase exponentially, the level of risk will decrease exponentially, and the detection of violations will likewise increase exponentially.

In closing, I would like to return to where I began. We have maintained heightened attention thanks to the engagement of school security officers, the State Police, school leaders and parent councils. To be fair, these councils, once largely amorphous bodies, have become increasingly important as parents have become more attentive. Nevertheless, preventing, deterring and making extreme incidents impossible has required an exhausting effort. Fortunately, we have had only one other incident, and that occurred outside the school grounds. Yet the scale of the effort is such that, however hard one tries, the outcome can never be considered entirely satisfactory.

This is all the more important today, when we live in the age of the enemy of children, the most dangerous troublemaker in the neighbourhood: the algorithm in the pockets or schoolbags of teenagers and younger children. This system will strengthen our capacity and will also place a strong focus on interaction with parents.

The Minister of Education will establish a special protocol to inform parents through the system of parent councils, which also includes a general council. I see here one of the most engaged citizens I have encountered in office, who chairs the Parent Council. The aim is to keep parents informed, not specifically about their own child, but about how the system is functioning, and to receive feedback, advice or requests from parents in order to improve it or further increase its vigilance. This is extremely important for everyone. Parents should feel fully reassured and, for that reason, they must remain continuously informed.

I would like to thank everyone who made it possible for this process to reach this stage. With God’s help and thanks to the tireless work of those who are turning this project into reality, we hope that over the next 12 months the whole of Albania will be live, in the sense that the territory will be monitored in support of highly intelligent management of public safety, public order and tranquillity.

This will provide citizens with an extraordinary tool that they have not had until now, as we will also work to integrate what was formerly the Digital Police Station into the system. In other words, we will work to ensure that citizens have their own inbox within the system and that the system verifies their concerns in real time, whether concerning illegal parking, an unlawful intervention or other matters. Naturally, this will apply along the main road axes, in strategically important community areas and wherever the public interest is sufficiently high for us to place the system at its service.

Thank you very much, everyone!