14:30
02/10/2026 - 14:30 - ISBA C115 -
Results from the collaboration between the Consulting Class of 2025/26 with the Belgian Foreign Service
With participation by Mohamed Achraf Saidi, Maxime Dejean, Lucie Rascol, Gauss Dountsop, Christian Ritter (UCLouvain) and Lev Lhommeau (SPF Affaires Etrangères)
In person in room C-115, 20 voie du Roman Pays, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.
This seminar will consist of two parts.
Part 1: 14h30-15h30
In part 1, we will discuss the problem of creating, checking and delivering narrative texts for international transparency of development projects. Lev Lhommeau from the Belgian Foreign Service will explain the context of the transparency documentation needs. We will then define and discuss approaches to handle this need by automatic text generation processes using available tabular and textual information. Key points in this process are text acquisition using web scraping and targeted post processing, uses of classical NLP to assemble relevant elements in the acquired texts and tabular information and the generation of prototype narratives. In a third stage, we will discuss uses of generative AI to improve these prototypes. This involves a discussion of security and authenticity. Security (avoiding egress of internal information to generate texts) is handled using local implementations of a small LLM. Authenticity is handled by carefully crafting context grounded prompts and by checking against common patterns of confabulation (such as adding commonly known information about international events.
The work has yielded a prototype application on which the work group at the Foreign Service can continue building and adapting.
Part2: 16h-17h
After the coffee break, we shall demonstrate how versions of these approaches can work in practice.
Participants will have ample opportunity to ask questions and give suggestions.