Published on the 13/05/2025 | Written by Heather Wright

70 percent decrease in time spent reporting…

New Zealand local and central government agencies are harnessing AI and low code solutions to manage Official Information Act and Local Government Official Information Act requests, with one agency claiming a 70 percent decrease in the hours spent reporting.

OIA and LGOIA requests to government agencies are increasing: Public service manages close to 38,000 requests every six months, up from 26,000 each six months two years ago, with the complexity of the requests also increasing. Any New Zealander can request, with some limited exceptions, any information held by the Government, including information about themselves.

“The project has demonstrated the possibility of achieving significant time savings and efficiency through AI.”

But getting that information – as any journalist will tell you – takes time. Under the Official Information Act agencies must respond to requests for information ‘as soon as practicable and no later than 20 working days after receiving the request’. That timeframe, can, and often is, extended, however, though official figures say for the six months to the end of December 2024, agencies responded on time to 97.8 percent of requests – down from 98.2 percent in the previous reporting period.

And for the agencies themselves, it means increasing resources are tied up dealing with official information requests and issues, rather than being deployed elsewhere.

The processes for reporting on OI requests and responses are also time consuming and labour intensive and around 6,500 requests are transferred or refused each year because the information is already publicly available, meant to be handled by other departments or it doesn’t exist.

Microsoft says several different uses of its technologies are underway across several agencies, though it’s not disclosing specifics around the agencies using the technology.

It is, however, claiming some big results.

“One agency has reported a 71 percent reduction in hours spent reporting on ministerial products and a 70 percent reduction in allocation time,” Microsoft says.

The company is also citing an agency saying its seen a 70 percent reduction in hours spend reporting and a 70 percent reduction in request allocation time.

Those results appear to come from a solution focused on Official Information lifecycle manager apps, using model-driven Power Apps or Dynamics 365 Customer Service with Power Automate and Power BI, integrated with existing document stores, CRM systems and data warehouses.

It’s designed to manage request lifecycles, providing an overall view for managers and a ‘subsection’ view for participants, along with notifications for deadlines and tasks to simplify workflow synchronisation.

Microsoft says content and document management tools ensure requests and responses have the correct components and formats required, with minimal administrative overhead. Connected process and hand-offs ensure necessary checks are completed before the information is released within committed timeframes.

The solution also includes data and reporting capabilities to enable the organisation to gain insights into their processes, identify trends and make decision to improve efficiency.

“Export to data warehouses for more in-depth insights can also be enabled,” Microsoft says.

The company says the solution has improved efficiencies, with various systems integrated into one platform to streamline logging and tracking requests, along with enhancing visibility, reducing manual effort, and improving reporting and user satisfaction.

“The integration and simplification of processes and systems have been positively received by users who are spending less time on administration and more time on complex Official Information responses, and contributors who are spending more time on core roles than Official Information responses.”

In another example, Microsoft and its local partner, Australian-based Arinco, developed Official Information routing and response agents, using Copilot Studio or Azure Open AI Agent in conjunction with existing email, document store and CRM systems.

The agents help expedite, triage and route incoming requests to the right team, reducing delays and errors; and automate response drafting, reviewing requests against previous responses and drafting an initial response using existing answers.

The draft is then provided to the lead business unit for approval and a final response is sent manually to ensure all necessary checks are completed before information is released. The response is then added to a repository making it available for future reference.

Microsoft says the solution has improved response times, enhanced accuracy and consistency and simplified request and response lifecycle management for Official Information.

The rapid implementation took ‘just a few weeks’ minimising disruption and is highly customisable and can be tailored to meet the needs of different local government agencies, Microsoft says.

Daniel Lund, Arinco New Zealand general manager, says one official information solution it recently deployed for a local government is expected to recapture 20 percent of staff time.

The company is known to have been working with Tasman District Council to streamline its Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act process, developing an AI solution to surface relevant information faster and enable more efficient compliant responses.

Mike Pratt, Tasman District Council head of data, development and architecture, says the project has demonstrated the possibility of achieving ‘significant’ time savings and efficiency through AI.

Microsoft, for its part, is bolshy about the potential for AI to improve the official information process, reducing time and costs. In a New Zealand report on optimising official information management with AI, it pushes for reducing the average response times for OIA’s to four days from the current 13 and for handling the majority of those 6,500 yearly requests which are transferred or refused ‘before they come in the door’.

“The public service is focused on driving value for money and delivering the services New Zealanders want,” says Microsoft New Zealand managing director Vanessa Sorenson. “Responding to official information requests in a timely way is an important part of that, while also improving efficiency – including on agency reporting requirements – and freeing up public servants for other work.”

A number of government agencies in New Zealand and Australia have been trialling Microsoft’s AI offerings, predominantly Copilot, beyond the OI sphere.

Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency coordinated government trials of the Copilot offering across more than 60 government agencies and some 7,600 staff from January to June last year.

It’s evaluation of the trial found 69 percent of participants felt there was a marked improvement in the speed of wrapping up tasks when using Copilot, with 61 percent believing it had enhanced the quality of work output.

The DTA reported an average saving of an hour of note taking and administrative work a day.

But the AU$1.2 million trial also adoption challenges and highlighted the need to spend additional time reviewing content which was generated, with the DTA saying there are clear opportunities for tailored solutions that could handle highly technical material.

“The evaluation points to the importance of agencies carefully considering detailed and adaptable implementation of these solutions.”