Lugo Provincial Council runs 17 AI tools on open-source and open-weight models on its own servers (MencIA)

Overview

The Provincial Council of Lugo, Spain, operates an AI Laboratory in production with 17 tools (8 applications and 9 assistants) running open-source and open-weight models on its own servers, using Ollama, vLLM, LangChain and Open WebUI, with RAG only on Council documents. The 2026-2030 MencIA strategy aims to extend this to the province's 66 small municipalities. Internal measurements cited in the source: daily email management in the Presidency Office fell from about 60 minutes to 5, and analysis of grant calls from about 30 minutes to 2.

The challenge

MencIA addresses the dilemma of 'Digital Feudalism', in which public administrations hand control of their data to proprietary 'black box' technologies. The Council wanted small towns to be able to use secure, publicly controlled AI without depending on large technology vendors.

The solution

The Council runs open-source and open-weight AI models on its own infrastructure, so that sensitive information never leaves its servers. The technical stack combines Ollama and vLLM for inference, Docker for containerisation, LangChain for orchestration and Open WebUI for general chat, with purpose-built interfaces; retrieval-augmented generation works only on the Council's own documents. Each application solves a single, well-defined task and returns a short, structured output, and AI is positioned as an assistant, with a person holding the final decision.

Reported business value

Internal measurements cited by the source show daily email management in the Presidency Office falling from about 60 minutes to 5, extraction of insolvency notices taking seconds rather than 15-20 minutes, and analysis of grant calls falling from about 30 minutes to 2. The extension to municipalities and the 2028 and 2030 targets are plans, not delivered results.