LGOIMA Request Details

ManawatÅ« District Council (MDC) uses over 120 different business systems, many of which are at varying levels of their AI journey/maturity.  

For example, Facebook already uses AI to provide targeted advertisements and marketing material to its users. MDC uses Facebook to promote our internal events/news to the members of the public, so one could argue we are already using AI.  The topic of AI is wide, and it really depends on how you define “AI”. 

For the purpose of this LGOIMA request, we will assume that the request is asking specifically about GenAI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, etc. 

Currently no such tools have been officially sanctioned by the council, i.e. there are no business requirements or expectations any of our staff should be using such tools however this is not to say that AI is not used in personal capacity, e.g. many of our staff have already been exposed to these tools through the free accounts they have created. They have used it for tasks involving publicly available information, following Council policy (the Communication Technology Policy and the Privacy Policy) that no sensitive information should be disclosed inappropriately.  

We are proactively exploring enterprise accounts which will provide safe environment for our staff to utilise AI tools more productively, without fear of accidentally sharing sensitive information in public domain. We believe AI will be very useful going forward and are starting to form our strategies with AI in mind. 

We have started drafting our AI policy however it is currently in early draft format. 

We are more than happy to discuss our progress in the AI space with our local PSA organisers/delegates and would always keep them informed of any impact on our staff (i.e. their members). 

ManawatÅ« District Council publishes responses to Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA).  We will publish the LGIOIMA response along with a summary of the request on our website.  Requests and responses may be paraphrased. 

To protect your privacy, we will not generally publish personal information about you, or information that identifies you.   

If you wish to discuss this response with us, please feel free to contact the LGOIMA Response Team on 06 323 0000 or by replying to this email.  

Warm regards,