AI in Public Authorities

All courses / AI Governance / Module 4 / Chapter 17

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Explain why a public authority needs legality before capability and how the legal basis is recorded as a property of the system.
• Distinguish decision support from automated decision-making in the data model, the audit log and the metrics.
• Draft a reasons log entry and a public register entry for a system that influences decisions about citizens.
• Reconcile the retention rules of the AI Act, the GDPR and archives law in a retention schedule.

Key concepts

Decision support versus decision-making

In decision support a case officer reads the proposal and signs; in decision-making no person is in the path. The line concerns where authority resides, so it must be visible in the data model, the audit log and the metrics that reveal when human review has become a formality.

Reasons log

For every decision the system influences, a record of the inputs, model version, output, applied rule and the human action that followed, written in the language of the case and retained for as long as the decision can be appealed. It is distinct from Article 12 logging.

Algorithm register

The place where transparency, inventory and AI Act registration converge. Each entry is a version-controlled file the pipeline validates before publishing its public fields to the website and, where required, the EU database.

FRIA as a promotion gate

The fundamental rights impact assessment treated as code: the pipeline refuses to promote a high-risk system without an approved assessment, and a change to purpose or affected population reopens it automatically.

Retention schedule

Where three rules meet: logs kept at least six months under Article 26(6) of the AI Act, deletion under the GDPR's storage limitation, and possible permanent retention under archives law. The archivist owns it and the pipeline enforces it as configuration.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. Nordvik Region publishes its own weakness, the parity gap for single-parent households, because a record that reports only good news is not believed. What would your organisation need in order to publish a weakness of that kind?
2. The review time recorded in the reasons log shows, in aggregate, whether human review is real. What other signals would tell you that review has become a formality?
3. More AI artefacts are records than most programmes expect, including prompt templates and possibly an official's prompts and outputs. How would your records management plan have to change?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. How does the chapter distinguish the reasons log from the technical logging of Article 12 of the AI Act?

   1. It is written in the language of the case and kept for as long as the decision can be appealed
   2. It is kept by the provider for ten years, whereas Article 12 logs are kept by the deployer for six months
   3. It records only decisions that went against the applicant
   4. It replaces Article 12 logging for systems used by public authorities
   Show the answer

   A. It is written in the language of the case and kept for as long as the decision can be appealed
   The reasons log records inputs, model version, output, applied rule and the human action that followed in the language of the case, and it serves the decision letter and the appeal body. Article 12 logging remains a separate, technical record.

2. In Nordvik Region's arrangements for its benefit triage system, how are appeals handled?

   1. By the same case officer, who is shown the raw score for the appeal
   2. By the supplier, which re-runs the model on the corrected data
   3. By a separate unit that has no access to the triage score
   4. By the regional executive committee, at its next public meeting
   Show the answer

   C. By a separate unit that has no access to the triage score
   The transparency record states that appeals are handled by a separate unit without access to the triage score, so that an appeal is decided by a person who did not rely on the model's estimate.

3. Where no rule of Union or Member State law authorises automated decisions with suitable safeguards, what can a public authority's system do, according to the chapter?

   1. Decide automatically, provided that the citizen is informed afterwards
   2. Only recommend, and a natural person must decide
   3. Decide automatically for favourable outcomes and refer the rest
   4. Nothing, since any use of the model would lack a legal basis
   Show the answer

   B. Only recommend, and a natural person must decide
   For authorities, the relevant exception in Article 22 of the GDPR is authorisation by law with suitable safeguards. Where such a rule exists its safeguards become architectural requirements; where it does not, the system can only recommend.