Ryan Malone

You see it on X all the time or whatever social platform where journalists or sector groups or whatever feel incredibly frustrated

But, you know, we've got to be clear here.

The OIA is never some kind of carte blanche.

You get the information you've asked for.

There is a presumption that you will be given it, but it's always subject to the official going, look, you know, I'm looking through this document.

I'm looking through this email.

If I release the document or part of the email, then some harm is going to happen.

For example, you know, it might harm New Zealand's national security.

Five Eyes partners might get grumpy with us and not share information if we start releasing it, you know.

Or government has a lot of personal information on people.

So the officials are always having to do a balancing act.

My sense...

Sharon, is that sometimes the requesters don't always appreciate the two sides of the equation.

Understandably, they want the information, but sometimes there are bigger things that officials need to think about.

You know, if you are government and you say, our plan is to roll this out in the OIA space, maybe there's something of a canary down the mine for further AI work, let's test it.

And so that could be done relatively easily.

Say, take 10 agencies, say to them, what were your last 100 requests that you completed, made decisions on?

Give those same hundred requests to the AI model, see what decisions it produces, and let's see what differences there are.

There might not be many, and those results should be shared with us.

Again, do we have confidence in the use of AI in what is frankly a very important democratic sort of pillar of our system in New Zealand?