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AI Productivity and Drafting Assistant for CRTC Staff

Inform · Employment & Work

What it collects that can identify you

About behaviour
Identifiable data
  • Prompts, queries, and instructions entered by CRTC employees when interacting with the chatbot interface. These interactions are attributable to individual named users.
Sensitive personal information
Identifiable data
  • Employee account identifiers and profile information used to authenticate and personalize the Copilot experience for each CRTC user.
Run by
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Shared with
Accountable organization, Vendor

What it is for

InformEmployment & Work

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered assistant being piloted by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to help employees work more efficiently. It uses large language model technology to generate text, answer questions, and support day-to-day tasks. The system is currently in a pilot phase to evaluate its value to the organization. Only Government of Canada employees at the CRTC use this system; it does not directly affect members of the public.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

About behaviour
Identifiable data
  • Prompts, queries, and instructions entered by CRTC employees when interacting with the chatbot interface. These interactions are attributable to individual named users.
Sensitive personal information
Identifiable data
  • Employee account identifiers and profile information used to authenticate and personalize the Copilot experience for each CRTC user.

Processing

Language Models
  • Microsoft Copilot is built on large language model (LLM) technology that reads, generates, summarizes, and answers questions in natural language.

What it does

Creating (Generative AI)
Human decides
  • Microsoft Copilot generates new text, summaries, drafts, and responses in human language. All outputs are reviewed and acted upon by the CRTC employee; the AI creates content, but the employee decides what to use.
Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • Copilot understands natural language queries and retrieves relevant context from documents and conversations to support employees.

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • Copilot produces new text — drafts, summaries, answers, and other written content — that did not exist before the employee submitted their request. The content itself is not about specific individuals.

Run by

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
  • The CRTC is the Canadian federal regulator deploying Microsoft Copilot as a pilot program for its employees.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-CRTC-001

Built by

Microsoft
  • Microsoft builds, supplies, and licenses the Copilot AI system used by the CRTC.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-CRTC-001

Kept for

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Shared with

Available to the accountable organization
  • Interaction logs and outputs generated through Copilot may be accessible to the CRTC as the deploying organization, subject to Microsoft's enterprise data governance terms.
Available to vendor
  • Microsoft, as the technology provider, may have access to usage data and interaction data according to its enterprise service agreements and privacy policies.

Stored

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

How to read the colours

Can it identify you?

Anonymized data
Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
Pseudonymous data
Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
Identifiable data
The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.

Who completes the loop?

Human decides
This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
Human executes
This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
Autonomous
This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.

Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.

What you can do

Ask about this system

Questions go to the Helpful Places, not the vendor.

Your rights

  • Right to Be Informed of AI UseGovernment of Canada employees at the CRTC are informed through the pilot program enrollment process that they are interacting with an AI system. The AI Register entry makes the existence of this system publicly available.
  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyThe CRTC has publicly registered this AI system in the Government of Canada AI Register. Microsoft publishes general documentation about how Copilot and its underlying language models function.

Risks and safeguards

  • Societal & cultural harmLLM outputs may contain hallucinations, misinformation, or culturally biased content that employees could inadvertently rely on in official work.Safeguard: The CRTC pilot program is exploratory, intended to assess value before wider deployment. Employees are expected to review and validate all AI-generated content before use in official contexts.
  • Psychological harmEmployees may over-rely on AI-generated content, reducing critical thinking or creating anxiety about job roles.Safeguard: Participation in the pilot is positioned as voluntary exploration; the program is framed as augmenting rather than replacing employee work.