Public-service track — formal gates

Principle

Efficiency gains alone do not legitimize a public system. Legal mandate, proportionality, fundamental rights, transparency, accessibility, recourse, and archiving are part of the outcome.

The Mont-Rive City synthetic case applies these gates to an A2 administrative agent that checks planning dossiers. It preserves the counter and postal channel, makes the low case economically non-viable, and keeps 100% of public decisions with qualified staff.

Gate P0 — Public opportunity

Require:

• the public-service problem and population concerned;
• the authority’s mandate and competence;
• consideration of non-AI options;
• a baseline for quality, time, cost, access, and errors;
• an administrative owner and decision authority.

Gate P1 — Legality and impacts

• qualify purpose, data, decisions, and affected people;
• determine the impact assessments required;
• assess non-discrimination, accessibility, language, and digital exclusion;
• define notice, explanation, challenge, and human recourse;
• involve data protection, legal, security, archives, and the relevant service.

Gate P2 — Procurement and architecture

• auditable requirements in the procurement and contract;
• access to logs, documentation, and evidence;
• subprocessors, regions, transfers, retention, and training;
• notification of model changes and incidents;
• ownership, export, deletion, continuity, and exit;
• prohibition on supplier secrecy preventing lawful oversight;
• accessibility and interoperability tests.

The European model contractual clauses for public procurement of AI systems are a guidance resource and must be adapted to applicable law.

Gate P3 — Independent evaluation

• a test set representative of the population and rare cases;
• results by segment and severity;
• tests for security, abuse, drift, and unavailability;
• independent review of thresholds and evidence;
• documented limits and uncertainties;
• no authority to act beyond what was tested.

Gate P4 — Controlled pilot

• shadow mode before any influence;
• bounded population, duration, data, and authorized staff;
• human oversight with the necessary time and authority;
• complaint channel and immediate stop mechanism;
• public or internal comparison with the baseline, as obligations require.

Gate P5 — Production and accountability

• a formal decision and acceptance of residual risks by the competent authority;
• system registration and appropriate notice;
• logging, archiving, monitoring, and audits;
• operational human recourse;
• service continuity without AI;
• reassessment after a significant change;
• a retirement date and conditions.

Stop conditions

Stop or return to the safe process in the event of an unauthorized legal effect, severe discrimination, a data breach, loss of traceability, unavailable recourse, an unevaluated supplier change, or authority exceeding the granted powers.