Simeon Brown: a recipient of official information. PHOTO: PETER MCINTOSH Artificial intelligence help seemed momentarily enticing when I was stomping about effing and blinding about my latest Official Information Act frustration. True, I would have to swallow my concerns about the environmental impact of AI use, but if it made getting responses to OIA requests even slightly more efficient it would be better, wouldn’t it? Then I remembered my recent experiences with AI. One involved me trying to find my review of the Topp Twins memoir Untouchable Girls. According to Mr Google’s AI, the Topp Twins and I collaborated on that tome. Spurred on by its own nonsense, AI went on to say: ‘‘McLean, a well-known Otago Daily Times columnist, wrote the book with Dames Jools and Lynda Topp’’. If only. The closest I got to such fame was being a classmate of the book’s editor, Rachel Scott. A repeat search some days later showed AI had pulled back from its claim about my authorship, but it baffles me where it got the idea in the first place when it could not even find my review. Early this month, I asked when Parliament was next sitting and AI duly told me it was scheduled to sit on Tuesday, June 9. But when I checked the parliamentary calendar, I found that was rubbish. The House does not sit until June 23. In a recent episode of the podcast The Detail, it was suggested by Civicsquare director Dr Ryan Malone that using AI for processing OIA requests could be tested by 10 agencies. They could compare their responses to their last 100 requests with an AI tool processing the same requests to see what the difference would be. But if AI was to be used extensively to find relevant OIA material and, heaven help us, organise redactions, how would it be trained? Would it be programmed to ensure anything which might be slightly politically sensitive would be struck out (think of the recent debacle over the withholding of information on slides unpalatable to the government’s line on the liquefied natural gas terminal)? Many of those who deal regularly with the OIA have long sought a review of the Act. They are fed-up with the lack of consequences for unexplained delays, responses which do not answer the question asked or which contain unreasonable redactions, or evidence of sloppy record keeping, But the government’s response has been to fret about the cost of compliance with the OIA, and for Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith to express reservations about the breadth of information being sought. What would he want left out, I wonder? Maybe any documents handed over in hard copy by lobbyists which miraculously disappear or those whose origins remain unknown despite their similarity to Big Tobacco propaganda. The new Ombudsman’s decision to lessen the number of formal investigations of delay complaints has meant there are fewer opportunities for bad behaviour to be called out publicly by his office. Does this just encourage unreasonable delay? While some OIA requests are complicated and involve much trawling through emails and other communications to ensure compliance, many simpler requests are also subject to unexplained delays. For instance, in mid-February, I asked Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora some straightforward questions about a change I had noticed on the bowel screening consent form. On June 2, I received a response with a breezy apology without explanation for the delay and which failed to answer one of the few questions asked (although when I pointed this out they answered it the next day — maybe they knew it was my birthday). Despite years of talk from successive governments about proactive releasing of information, which would avoid the need for many OIA requests, its use is still patchy. In conjunction with this year’s Budget, Health Minister Simeon Brown announced the bowel screening age would be lowered from 58 to 56, but no advice he received on this accompanied this news. Releasing such information on Budget day should be standard practice. It is not as if Budget decisions rain down from the sky on unsuspecting ministers on the big day before they have time to raise their umbrellas. Anyone seeking the bowel screening information must go through a formal OIA process which could take up to 20 working days to produce a result. Will he have followed official advice this time, or gone against the recommendation of his advisers as he did last year when he lowered the age to 58? Last year, in his media interviews after his announcement, Mr Brown mentioned receiving advice but carefully avoided saying he had not followed it. Officials then had recommended lowering the age to 58 for most of the population and to 56 for Māori and Pasifika. If they had new advice for the minister this year, we will have to wait to find out. • Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
