AI Transparency Statement
City of Prospect prides itself on delivering efficient and sustainable services to its community, by ensuring integrity and innovation remains at the heart of Council’s leadership.
To assist its effective operations, City of Prospect uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support our people to deliver high quality services for our community.
AI is used as an assistive and augmenting technology, meaning, decisions that affect residents, businesses or the community are always made by people and does not replace council staff.
Our approach to AI is guided by strong governance and a commitment to ethical, responsible and transparent use aligned to Australia’s AI Ethics Principles.
Why we use AI
City of Prospect uses AI to support our workforce by:
- improve internal efficiency and service quality
- reduce repetitive administrative tasks so staff can focus on community centred services
- support analysis and insights to enable better informed decision making
- support our strategic principle to innovate and deliver value for our community
Our principles for ethical AI
Our use of AI is guided by Australia’s AI Ethics principles and below is how they are meaningful to us:
- Community benefit: AI is used to benefit people and the community
- People‑first: People remain responsible and accountable for all decisions
- Fair and inclusive: Risks of bias or unfair outcomes are actively identified and managed
- Private and secure: Privacy and data protection are built into every stage of AI use
- Safe and reliable: AI systems are used only for their intended purpose
- Clear and open: The use of an AI tool is explained in a way people can understand
- Open to review: People can question or challenge outcomes where AI is involved
- Clear responsibility: Human oversight and accountability are always maintained
Keeping your data safe
We recognise that community trust depends on how well we protect information.
- Data is treated as a public asset and is managed carefully, securely and respectfully
- Personal and confidential information is handled in accordance with City of Prospect’s Protection of Information Policy
- Only approved and authorised AI tools may be used for council work
- Council data and confidential information will not be uploaded to unauthorised or public web-based AI tools (for example, public versions of Copilot, Gemini or ChatGPT)
Transparency and accountability
City of Prospect is committed to being open about how and why AI is used, this includes:
- clearly communicating our approach to AI
- ensure transparency in our approach to AI
- maintaining human oversight of all decision making
- regularly reviewing our AI practices in line with technological change and community expectations
What AI will not be used for
To protect residents and maintain trust, AI will not be used to:
- make final or fully automated decisions that impact the community
- replace council staff or remove human judgement from decision making
Council staff will not:
- use unauthorised AI tools that pose risks to privacy, security or data integrity
- operate outside established governance frameworks or their authorised delegations