Federal government canvassing public servants for ideas on using AI at work

Statistics Canada is one of two government departments partnered on a 'challenge' asking public servants for ideas on how to use AI in the workplace. Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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Statistics Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have partnered with specialist publishing house Global Government Forum on a project dubbed the “Public Service Data/AI Challenge.”

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The challenge, which opened for submissions at the end of May, comes as the federal government is about to release its highly anticipated and long-delayed national AI strategy.

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AI use across the federal public service, which is a central part of the government’s plans to maintain productivity while shedding thousands of jobs, is guided by a separate federal strategy released last year.

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As the technology is increasingly baked into daily office work, the Global Government Forum is canvassing rank-and-file public servants for ideas on how to improve how AI is applied to public services.

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“We want to support the career development of participating public servants, helping you develop your skills, experience, and contacts across government,” the website reads.

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The website does not mention financial compensation, though it does state that employers are expected to allow staff to participate during work hours.

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Submissions do not need to be well-developed, according to the website. Instead, the most promising ideas will be developed with a team and eventually pitched to judges. The winning idea will be supported toward implementation.

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The challenge has been running in the United Kingdom since 2022. Canada’s version is currently open for submissions, and applications close on June 30.

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AI use expands across public sector

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The federal government’s public AI register, part of a federal AI strategy meant to guide the uptake of the rapidly developing technology, currently lists about 400 current or planned AI systems across 42 government institutions.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney and AI Minister Evan Solomon have repeatedly committed to expanding the use of AI across the public service.

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The first federal budget under Carney pointed to the “integration of technology and artificial intelligence” as a key strategy for boosting productivity and improving services.

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But that integration has already drawn concerns around specific uses, such as the government’s AI-powered translation tool GCTranslate, which has some translators concerned about linguistic rights, bias and the loss of nuance in translated texts.

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When the federal strategy dropped last year, Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, called AI a “Trojan horse” for widespread public-service cuts.

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At the time, Prier said any pursuit of AI to replace, rather than supplement, the work of public servants was a fool’s errand that could lead to arbitrary cuts.

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The government’s long-awaited national AI strategy is set to land sometime this week.

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A draft version of the strategy leaked to CBC laid out several goals related to the technology, including creating thousands of AI-related jobs and helping small- and medium-sized businesses access public computing infrastructure.

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