8.1 Stakeholder and affected-community participation
Organizations shall identify and meaningfully involve the persons, institutions, and communities that develop, operate, regulate, are affected by, or bear the risks of an AI system, particularly affected, marginalized, and vulnerable groups. Participation shall begin while it can still influence the system’s purpose, design, safeguards, and conditions of use, continue as new effects emerge, and remain accessible across differences in language, resources, and digital access.
8.2 Local contextualization
An AI system shall be evaluated against the laws, institutions, administrative practices, infrastructure, and organizational capacity of the environment in which it will operate. Validation in another country or organization does not by itself establish suitability for North Macedonia. Local adaptation shall address the system’s actual operation, governance, and integration with existing institutions and infrastructure, rather than only translation of its interface.
8.3 Institutional capacity and maturity
An organization shall not deploy artificial intelligence beyond its capacity to govern data, supervise providers, evaluate performance, exercise human oversight, and respond to errors or incidents. Before deployment, it shall assess its people, processes, infrastructure, authority, and financial ability to sustain responsible operation.
8.4 Linguistic and cultural inclusion
AI systems used in North Macedonia shall be evaluated for the Macedonian language, its dialectal varieties and Cyrillic script, as well as for Albanian and the other languages, scripts and cultural contexts of communities living in the country. Organizations shall identify and address linguistic, cultural or data gaps that produce weaker performance, exclusion or misinterpretation and, where necessary, provide an effective human or non-AI alternative.
8.5 Data fitness for the local context
Organizations shall ensure that data used by an AI system adequately reflect the local legal, institutional and social context in which it operates. Particular attention shall be given to uneven digitalization, fragmented records, unwritten practices and relevant information that exists outside formal digital systems. The absence of digital data shall not be treated as proof that a fact or circumstance does not exist, and material gaps shall require additional human verification or restriction of the system’s use.