Parliamentary Hill in Ottawa in March. The federal government says it plans to launch public registrations to keep Canadians up to date with regard to AI use.Shawn Kilpatrick/Canadian media
The federal government says it plans to launch public registrations to keep Canadians in a loop on increasing use of artificial intelligence.
Stephen Burt, the government's chief data officer, told the Canadian press.
This registry also helps the government itself track ongoing AI projects. Kara Beckles, executive director of privacy and responsible data for the Finance Committee, said that AI platforms are used in many ways across the government, but there is no “complete and complete list.”
Over the past few years, “The department has started experimenting more and more with AI implementations in a variety of ways.”
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She used AI to cite fishing and marine Canada to help find lost fishing gear, gain processing satellite data from Canadian Agriculture to predict crop yields, and used AI to transport Canada to screen high-risk air cargo.
However, these initiatives are fragmented, with individual departments launching their own projects. Public Services is currently working on a more coordinated approach under the AI strategy launched earlier this year.
Prime Minister Mark Carney campaigned to use AI to make public services more efficient in the spring federal elections, while Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne asked his colleagues to identify cuts to program spending of 15% between 2028 and 29.
In August, the federal government worked with the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Company to identify where AI could strengthen its public services operations.
Burt said that AI will become an important tool to make government more efficient, but that's not the only thing.
“We are still handing out the extent to which artificial intelligence as a specific technology will bring certain savings and efficiency,” he said.
The AI strategy notes that during consultations, the government heard from the department that a central hub is needed to support the project and share knowledge.
Through the first project to test the central hub approach, the Ministry of Finance worked with the Translation Bureau to come up with an automated translation system for low-risk and low-value documents.
Burt said the tool will now be available in public services and procurement Canada and “will soon be rolled out in phases across other sectors and institutions.”
Beckles said the AI hub aims to identify current uses of artificial intelligence that can be expanded to operate across the government. She said translation tools are an attractive option as “every civil servant will need to access translation services one day.”
Some of the ideas behind the hub are to avoid duplication, Beckles said.
“We don't want five different departments to work on the same type of tool at the same time,” she said. “We want to integrate those efforts and make sure we build something once and then deploy it all over the system.”
As AI use grows, it becomes a more “mature” approach, Beckles said.
“We don't deal with a small number of projects across the system,” she said. “Instead, it's a small number of projects in all departments, or at least all medium sized projects.”
The government's AI strategy has also acknowledged the need for transparency and committed to prioritizing the establishment of public registration for AI systems.
Experts have previously tried to collect data on the scope of AI use in public services. Joanna Redden, an associate professor at Western University, stitched together a database released last year to show hundreds of AI use within the federal government.
The ministerial briefing document, created by Shared Services Canada earlier this year, was released last month.
Shared Services Canada employees use tasks such as creating emails and summarizing information to list internal alternatives to tools like ChatGpt. The document said it works “in a controlled environment that ensures proper security and data integrity.”
Other examples cited in this document include the Canadian legacy using “improve the ministerial communications process for automation and generation AI” and the Canadian revenue agency that allows Canadians to access their accounts using smartphones, government-issued IDs, and facial recognition technologies.
The finance department also said it had developed a tool to automate the collection and processing of tariff consultations, summarise industry data and draft initial responses from analysts and stakeholders.
Burt added that the registry is still under development and Beckles has yet to have a timeline for its launch.
Part of the tasks in the registry involve determining what information is included.
“We don't want to capture every time analysts use Copilot to help write emails, but we want to capture all the projects and systems with embedded AI,” says Beckles.
Beckles said the idea is to “ensure that it is built for the transparency of the public, so that we can use that complete and complete list for our own purposes.”
