Government agencies and research institutions are under growing pressure to make their open data portals AI-ready. Users increasingly expect to search by meaning, not just keywords. AI agents are beginning to crawl portals directly. And if your data is not structured for machine readability, it risks being bypassed or misinterpreted entirely.
But for many public sector organisations, adopting AI comes with a fundamental concern: data sovereignty. How do you add AI-powered capabilities to a data portal without exposing sensitive datasets to third-party models or losing control over how your data is used?
A sovereign approach to AI-powered discovery
This is the problem Ask AI was designed to solve. Developed by Link Digital as a CKAN extension, Ask AI adds a semantic search layer on top of existing data portals. Instead of matching keywords, it matches meaning, using vector embeddings stored in PostgreSQL via pgvector. Users can find relevant datasets even when they do not know the exact terminology publishers have used.
Critically, Ask AI is built with data sovereignty at its core. All processing stays within your secure infrastructure. Proprietary information is never sent to, or used to train, public AI models like ChatGPT or Gemini. Data managers retain full control over which datasets the AI can access and who is authorised to query them.
The result is a portal that is smarter and more accessible for both human users and AI systems, without compromising the data governance standards public sector organisations require.
For a deeper look at how AI is reshaping the open data landscape, read our recent article: What is the Future of Open Data in the AI Era?
Link Digital is a CKAN co-steward with over 24 years of experience in open data solutions for government, research, and non-profit organisations.
Learn more: linkdigital.com.au/ask-ai
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About our partner
Link Digital
System architects of data and knowledge infrastructureFor 25 years, Link Digital has designed and run the information systems that governments, research institutions and international organisations depend on. We build open data portals and internal data hubs, host and support them, and now make them ready for people and AI to ask questions of. Founded in Australia in 2001, we work with clients worldwide, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Pacific, and Latin America.Official CKAN co-stewardCKAN is a leading open source data portal platform, and Link Digital has been part of its community since 2012. Our Executive Director, Steven De Costa, and our engineers are involved across CKAN's governance, community and technical work, and our team includes the project's Core Tech Lead. We help shape the 2.12 and 3.0 roadmaps. For public sector buyers, that means open source with no vendor lock-in, and a partner with a say in the releases and long-term sustainability you will rely on.What we doAsk AI for CKAN. Ask questions in plain language and get verified answers drawn from your own data. It runs in your secure environment, never trains public models, and you control who can query which datasets. We start with an AI-readiness audit.End-to-end CKAN services. Consultancy, migration from legacy systems, hosting, support, extensions and theming, with DCAT and FAIR-aligned metadata.Managed hosting, support and maintenance. CKAN and Drupal on AWS infrastructure we architect and monitor, with security patch assessment, restore-verified backups and version currency. One team, one agreement, one invoice. We can take over portals built by others.Internal data hubs and Secure Data Exchange. Governed sharing across departments, with approval workflows, revocable data sharing agreements and a dashboard showing who is using your data.Custom CKAN and Drupal buildsStart a conversation with Link Digital: Book a consultation or request an AI-readiness audit.
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