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Helpful Places

Government of Canada – DTPR AI Register

AI Assistant for IT Service Desk Support

Inform

What it collects

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Individual program knowledge bases, intranet content, and relevant policies and legislation used to ground the virtual agent's responses. These are organizational documents, not personal data.
Run by
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
No data retained
Shared with
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Your copy
You cannot see the data it holds about you. What you can do

What it is for

Inform

This system is an AI-powered virtual agent that answers common questions for Government of Canada employees seeking IT or service desk support at Environment and Climate Change Canada. It draws on corporate knowledge bases, intranet content, and relevant policies to respond in natural language, reducing the volume of requests that need human triage. Users are informed that they are interacting with an AI, and no personal information is collected or processed.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Individual program knowledge bases, intranet content, and relevant policies and legislation used to ground the virtual agent's responses. These are organizational documents, not personal data.

Processing

Language Models
  • A language model underpins the virtual agent, interpreting employee queries and generating natural language responses from grounded knowledge base content.
Search & Retrieval
  • The virtual agent retrieves relevant passages from corporate knowledge bases, intranet content, and policy documents in response to employee queries before composing a natural language answer.

What it does

Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • The virtual agent understands natural language queries from employees, retrieves relevant content from knowledge bases, and surfaces answers. Human service desk agents remain available for requests that require escalation.
Creating (Generative AI)
Human decides
  • The virtual agent composes natural language responses to employee questions, grounded in documented knowledge bases rather than open-ended generation.

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • Natural language responses to employee service desk queries, composed by the virtual agent based on corporate knowledge bases and policy documents. No personal information is included in the outputs.

Run by

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
  • Environment and Climate Change Canada's Digital Services Branch built and operates this virtual agent proof of concept for internal service desk use.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-ECCC-004

Built by

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Kept for

No data retained
  • The register confirms that no personal information is involved. No personal data is retained by the system.
  • Duration: Not specified — no personal information collected

Shared with

Not available to me
  • No personal information is collected or processed by this system. As a result, there is no personal data to access. The register confirms personal information is not involved.

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 UseUsers are informed that they are interacting with an AI virtual agent. The register confirms AI use is disclosed to users.
  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyThe system is registered in the Government of Canada's public AI inventory, providing transparency about its purpose, data sources, and status. Employees can consult the register entry for information about how the system works.

Risks and safeguards

  • Civil liberties harmThe virtual agent could inadvertently provide incorrect guidance on policies or procedures, potentially affecting employees' access to services or their understanding of their rights and obligations.Safeguard: Responses are grounded in documented knowledge bases rather than open-ended generation; the system is in a proof-of-concept phase with human service desk agents available as escalation; and AI use is disclosed so employees can seek human review.