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Helpful Places

Government of Canada – DTPR AI Register

AI-Powered Sentiment Analysis on News Media

Inform

What it collects

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Publicly published media articles and news content are ingested as the primary runtime input. This is operational/public data, not personal data about identifiable individuals.
Run by
Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Shared with
Accountable organization, Vendor
Your copy
You cannot see the data it holds about you. What you can do

What it is for

Inform

This system, provided by vendor Meltwater, monitors news media articles and automatically scores the sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) expressed in them toward Veterans Affairs Canada topics. The primary users are Government of Canada employees who use the analytics to understand public media coverage. The system has been retired and is no longer in active use. No personal data about veterans or citizens appears to be processed; the system analyses published media content.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Publicly published media articles and news content are ingested as the primary runtime input. This is operational/public data, not personal data about identifiable individuals.

Processing

Affect & Emotion Analysis
  • Meltwater applies sentiment analysis to classify the tone and emotional valence of published media articles — not to individuals but to news content — in order to surface trends in how Veterans Affairs Canada topics are covered.

What it does

Deciding (Analytical AI)
Human decides
  • The system classifies and scores the sentiment expressed in media articles (positive, negative, or neutral) and provides analytics outputs. GC employees review these scores and decide how to act on the media intelligence.

Outputs

About a measurement
Anonymized data
  • The system produces sentiment scores, analytics dashboards, and trend measurements derived from media article content. These outputs describe aggregate or article-level sentiment, not individual persons.

Run by

Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC)
  • Veterans Affairs Canada is the federal department that deployed and used this media sentiment monitoring system for internal analytics purposes.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-VAC-ACC-005

Built by

Meltwater
  • Meltwater is the technology vendor that built and supplied this media monitoring and sentiment analytics product to Veterans Affairs Canada.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-VAC-ACC-005

Kept for

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

Shared with

Not available to me
  • The analytics outputs produced by this system were internal to Veterans Affairs Canada and available only to GC employees. Individual members of the public did not have access to the sentiment scores or dashboards generated by the system.
Available to the accountable organization
  • GC employees at Veterans Affairs Canada were the primary users of the analytics outputs produced by the system.
Available to vendor
  • As a vendor-supplied SaaS product, Meltwater may have had access to the data and queries processed through its platform as part of service delivery. The register entry does not specify data-sharing terms with the vendor.

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 Algorithmic TransparencyThis system is disclosed on the Government of Canada's AI Register. Members of the public may consult the register entry at the source URL for information about the system's purpose and status. The system is retired and no longer processing data.

Risks and safeguards

  • Societal & cultural harmSentiment analysis tools can misclassify tone, particularly for nuanced topics such as veteran welfare, potentially leading to misleading internal assessments of public opinion.Safeguard: The system is now retired. When active, outputs were advisory analytics reviewed by GC employees rather than driving automated decisions; human review was the primary safeguard.