Międzyzdroje Tests AI System for Notarial Deeds, Cutting Clerk Workload Fivefold

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski visited the city hall in Międzyzdroje on Monday to assess the ExtrAct system, which has spent seven months helping local clerks analyze notarial deeds, land registers and property tax documents. According to the ministry, the tool cuts a clerk's workload by an average of five times.

What Międzyzdroje Demonstrated

ExtrAct is a proof-of-concept system built by the IDEAS Research Institute and funded by the Ministry of Digital Affairs. The tool automatically scans and analyzes notarial documents and land registry entries, generating condensed summaries that clerks previously had to prepare by hand.

Międzyzdroje was not chosen for the pilot by accident. As a popular Baltic seaside resort, the municipality generates an unusually high volume of notarial transactions tied to real estate, and the deeds themselves can run to dozens of pages.

A Fivefold Speedup

Gawkowski stressed that the scale of the time savings is significant. Instead of the five employees needed each month to handle notarial deeds, one is now enough after the system's rollout. That translates directly into relief for smaller offices, which often struggle with staff shortages.

This solution will cut a clerk's workload by an average of five times. That means if we needed five employees a month to manage notarial deeds, today we need just one. - Krzysztof Gawkowski, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs

Międzyzdroje Mayor Mateusz Bobek confirmed that the effects are visible in the office's daily work. Tasks that used to take clerks several hours now take just a few minutes, thanks to automatic document scanning and summarizing.

We found that given the specific nature of the Międzyzdroje municipality, with a large number of notarial deeds, some running a dozen or several dozen pages, we're able to get quick summaries after scanning these documents. Something that would take us several hours by hand now takes just a few minutes. - Mateusz Bobek, Mayor of Międzyzdroje

Resistance to Change

The rollout was not without resistance. Bobek noted that some of the office's staff have 30 to 40 years of experience in administration, and habits tied to paper documentation do not disappear overnight. Trust in the tool built up gradually as the system was refined and new features were added.

ExtrAct is currently used by seven employees at Międzyzdroje's city hall, and the system costs the municipality around 20,000 zloty a year to maintain. The ministry describes that figure as symbolic compared with the potential time savings.

Plans to Expand to Other Municipalities

The Ministry of Digital Affairs is planning to scale the solution beyond Międzyzdroje. Gawkowski said the goal is to make the system available not just to large metropolitan areas but above all to smaller municipalities, which typically have fewer staff and IT resources to implement similar tools on their own.

Gdynia, Łódź and Częstochowa are among the municipalities mentioned as candidates for the next stages of testing. The ministry plans to spend around 30 million zloty a year on investments in artificial intelligence for public administration.

What It Means for Polish Local Government

The Międzyzdroje example shows that automating document work with AI is moving beyond announcements and into real, if still small-scale, deployments in Polish municipalities. For smaller local governments that have struggled for years with staff shortages amid a growing volume of property transactions, tools like this could become a genuine alternative to hiring more employees.

The key test will be whether the system holds up when scaled to offices with a different mix of documents and a different caseload than a small, if tourism-heavy, seaside municipality. The Ministry of Digital Affairs says the coming months will show whether the fivefold speedup in clerks' work can be repeated at a larger scale.