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Helpful Places

Government of Canada – DTPR AI Register

AI Assistant for IT Self-Service Support

Inform

What it collects that can identify you

About behaviour
Pseudonymous data
  • Natural-language queries submitted by VAC employees describing their IT issues. The system processes these inputs to retrieve relevant documentation and generate a response.

Also collects operational data and operational data, which is anonymized data.

Run by
Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Shared with
Not stated by the Helpful Places.

What it is for

Inform

This AI assistant helps Veterans Affairs Canada employees resolve standard IT issues on their own, without calling the help desk. It uses generative AI and retrieval-augmented generation to answer questions based on official IT policies and training materials. The system is currently in development and is intended for internal government staff only. Users are informed that they are interacting with an AI.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • VAC IT Service Desk policies and procedures used as the retrieval corpus for the RAG pipeline.
Operational data
Anonymized data
  • IT instructional and training resources used as the knowledge base for answering staff questions about standard IT issues.
About behaviour
Pseudonymous data
  • Natural-language queries submitted by VAC employees describing their IT issues. The system processes these inputs to retrieve relevant documentation and generate a response.

Processing

Language Models
  • Large language model (Microsoft platform) used to understand staff queries and generate natural-language IT support responses grounded in retrieved policy and training documents.
Search & Retrieval
  • Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) component that searches the VAC IT policy and training corpus to find passages relevant to each employee query before passing them to the language model.

What it does

Creating (Generative AI)
Human decides
  • Generates natural-language answers to IT support questions submitted by VAC staff. Responses are advisory — the employee decides whether to follow the guidance or escalate to a human agent.
Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • Retrieves and ranks relevant passages from VAC IT service desk policies and training resources to ground generated responses (retrieval-augmented generation pipeline).

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • Natural-language responses advising VAC staff on how to resolve standard IT issues, generated on demand from retrieved policy and training content. Output does not identify or describe individual users.

Run by

Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC)
  • Federal department responsible for deploying and operating this AI assistant for its internal IT service desk staff.

GC AI Registry — 2526-VAC-ACC-004

Built by

Microsoft
  • Technology vendor that developed and supplies the underlying generative AI platform used by this system.

GC AI Registry — 2526-VAC-ACC-004

Kept for

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Shared with

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

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 system. The register confirms that AI use is disclosed to users of this system.

Risks and safeguards

  • Societal & cultural harmGenerated responses may be inaccurate or outdated, leading staff to follow incorrect IT procedures.Safeguard: The RAG architecture grounds responses in official VAC IT policies and training materials, reducing hallucination. The system remains in development, allowing for iterative quality review before production deployment. Users retain the option to escalate to a human agent.