The Scottish Information Commissioner used ChatGPT to experiment with making freedom of information requests more comprehensible to the public.
David Hamilton said the AI-powered tool actually made some ‘legalistic’ FOI answers more explainable and ‘human’ in the language that it used.
The former police officer, who took up the post in October 2023, told MSPs at Holyrood that he also wants to engage young people on social media platforms to inspire them with the power of public information.
Hamilton told the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee last week: “One of the first things that I picked up was that, often, the responses to freedom of information requests are very legalistic, and I have asked the authorities to review that to make the information more accessible to young people and others, so that they can understand it clearly. Sometimes, as an adult, I struggle to understand what on earth a response means, so it needs that review.
“We did an experiment using ChatGPT to see whether it could construct a response that would explain a decision. It gave a more human answer than many of the responses that I have seen. It was a challenge to review that, because someone’s accessibility to understanding what they have been told is key. It would be good to see people being given advice about where to go when they ask, “What now?”. I have examples of situations in which children have asked questions and have got answers but they do not know what to do next.”
He said that most freedom of information requests come from members of the public, and he wants to use his role to better engage them, particularly young people online, in informing them about their rights.
“We are already on the conventional social media platforms, but we are considering whether we should now go on others,” he said. “I will not be posting on Snapchat or TikTok, but I will ensure that we are on Instagram and exploring different, and perhaps more edgy, communication methods to inspire people to say, “Oh, I didn’t know that” and get their attention in that way.”
Hamilton told MSPs that over the course of its existence – the office celebrates its 20th anniversary this year – there have been 1.4 million freedom of information requests. Of those requests, 83 per cent gave people some or all of the information that they requested, and 80 per cent of those requests were complied with on time.
The commissioner’s office itself is still facing backlogs, in the various cases it is asked to adjudicate on, although Mr Hamilton said it is making good progress and are over halfway through a queue of 384 cases. However, when a case of a local authority or health board not meeting its performance targets on responding to FOI requests, Mr Hamilton said his office finds it difficult to provide enough staffing resource to make the appropriate interventions. Going forward, he said that there will not be an improvement unless the office is given the necessary financial support to boost its 30-staff team.
However, there were positives. In an intervention with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, the commissioner’s office was able to support the health board on dramatically improving its response times to FOI requests. It went from responding to FOI requests on time in 56 per cent of cases it handled, to 87 per cent following intervention from the commissioner.
It also helped two organisations who had been “digitally on their knees” following cyberattacks. The commissioner assisted both the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Western Isles Council to get back on their feet when it came to providing information to the public. After the ransomware attack on SEPA in December 2020 – which caused the entire organisation to go offline – the commissioner finally closed its intervention with the body in December last year, supporting its recovery from responding to 14 percent of FOI requests on time to 90 percent last year.
The learning points from the incident helped Western Isles Council – itself a victim of a cyber incident in 2023 – to recover.
Claire Stephen, head of policy and information at the Scottish Information Commissioner, said: “That involved another cyber incident. We were able to put the council in contact with SEPA to get some advice and learning from its experience. We are working on getting key information on to its website and building up practice. Again, we have had a rather positive dialogue with the council, and we will continue to support it until we are satisfied that it has a sustainable regime.”
On the future of information handling, Mr Hamilton said we need to approach the issue of AI with caution.
“Technologies are now coming through that can summarise and give people the information that they want,” he said.
“However, guardrails need to be in place for the things that you do not want to go out, such as private data. I do not ever want to see, and I do not think that there ever will be, a situation in which a machine is deciding on what information can be given out in response to an information request. Ultimately, that will come back on the authority. The legislation is fairly clear on that, whether it involves a machine or a human, and I do not think that any authority will put its trust in a machine getting it right every time. We are a long way away from that.”
He added: “However, I see the potential for assistive technology in summarising and looking at things, as you say. As long as it goes back to reference points, I am pretty comfortable with that.”