While the government works to overhaul the rules around freedom of information (FOI) requests, Information and Privacy Commissioner Michael Harvey says the system is experiencing an \u201cunexpected surge\u201d in review requests, and he believes it is because people are relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to write up their disputes for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn conversations we\u2019ve had with other client-facing organizations of all sorts across the public body, we\u2019re hearing similar types of stories,\u201d Harvey said in an interview.<\/p>\n
And this is just one of several forces currently straining the FOI system, he says, theorizing that increased political polarization and a sense that the system is broken are also leading more people to file complaints. And as the system slows down, it just makes matters worse \u2014 the slower the response times get, the more people complain.<\/p>\n
Overall, Harvey said the number of requests his office receives has increased by 60 per cent in the past year. So far, his office has raised its file-closure rate, though only by 36 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith an increase in files at 60 per cent, that\u2019s obviously not enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the government is taking some action with a new FOI bill that aims to make it easier for officials to alter response timelines and deny certain types of requests.<\/p>\n
Citizens\u2019 Service Minister Diana Gibson introduced the bill on Feb. 26, but it has yet to pass second reading. Gibson says changes are needed as the volume of data captured by FOI requests continues to increase, costing time for government officials and overburdening the system.<\/p>\n
Critics, including third-party and Opposition MLAs, transparency advocates, and taxpayers\u2019 rights organizations, have lined up to challenge the bill, arguing it gives government officials too much leeway to reject FOI requests.<\/p>\n
Harvey is careful to sidestep much of this debate and maintain his neutrality as an independent officer of the legislature. However, while he is clear that he does not want to signal his support for the bill, he did offer his observations.<\/p>\n
Unlike the critics, Harvey doesn\u2019t think the FOI bill will erode the public\u2019s access to information. Nor does he believe it will reduce his ability to provide oversight.<\/p>\n
These are the things he says that he is most \u201cwary\u201d about.<\/p>\n
The above-mentioned advocates all expressed concern about provisions in the bill to allow officials to reject \u201cunreasonable\u201d requests and those deemed \u201cabusive or malicious.\u201d But Harvey does not think this wording will actually result in a curtailment of access.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our assessment, those words do not involve a diminution of our authority or a retraction of the right of access,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He acknowledges that the new rules could result in more work for his office when people challenge these decisions, although he is not overly concerned that this will be overly impactful.<\/p>\n
Getting a handle on the massive surge in complaints that he is already seeing is his real priority.<\/p>\n
\u2018Hockey stick\u2019-like jump in review requests<\/p>\n
Harvey says the 60 per cent jump in the number of privacy complaints his office received this past year brought the overall total to roughly 3,900.<\/p>\n
Speaking before the legislature\u2019s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services on April 24, he gave a familiar sports-equipment analogy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s what, in data visualization terms, you would call a \u2018hockey stick,\u2019\u201d he told the committee. \u201cThis jump means that the number of files coming into our office has more than doubled over the last five years.\u201d<\/p>\n
These files fall into three categories: privacy and access complaints, up 86 per cent, requests for FOI reviews, up 50 per cent, and privacy breach reports, up 28 per cent.<\/p>\n
Harvey believes a good deal of this increase is due to AI chatbots urging people to complain to his office when queried about a denied or redacted FOI response. Because the documents provided along with those FOI responses clearly state that the privacy commissioner can be contacted with complaints, Harvey thinks this is a result of AI regurgitating information.<\/p>\n
But this is not the only factor. He also believes AI is making it easier for people to write up their complaints, something that used to require time and effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn years past, people would be like, \u2018Oh, that seems like a bit of a process, and I don\u2019t know what\u2019s involved with that,\u2019\u201d Harvey said. \u201cBut now, with these tools available to people, they\u2019re saying, \u2018Well, can you please generate me a complaint?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey and his team still aren\u2019t able to quantify this impact, however, and this is still just a theory. He doesn\u2019t have hard evidence, such as tracking data on AI markers. At least, not yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cTracking the number of those that we either know or suspect have been generated by AI is a step that we\u2019re going to consider,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At the committee hearing, NDP MLA Rohini Arora asked Harvey if he had considered including a message asking people not to use AI to compose complaint requests. He responded that he didn\u2019t want to take away a tool people might need.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on this, Harvey says the ideal is to make public bodies more transparent and timely, so people don\u2019t have something to complain about in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the ultimate solution is to try to get to the root cause,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The real answer, he said, is a \u201ccultural change\u201d to \u201ctransparency by default\u201d so people don\u2019t need to file an FOI request in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the government works to overhaul the rules around freedom of information (FOI) requests, Information and Privacy Commissioner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-642515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}