Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
FOI Reference: FOI/202500478402
Date received: 1 August 2025
Date responded: 1 September 2025
Information requested
Request for information 1: A copy of any incident logs, error reports, or internal reviews involving the AI Document Understanding or Client Advisor Knowledge Assist systems used by Social Security Scotland.
Request for information 2: A summary or anonymised list of complaints or concerns raised by staff or service users in relation to these systems.
Request for information 3: Any recorded decisions or actions taken in response to such incidents or complaints.
Response
AI Document Understanding System:
Request for information 1:
Incident Logs: While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. This is because no incidents have been logged in relation to the AI process for this system.
This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested.
Error Reports: Two errors relating to the AI Document Understanding System were identified. These are included below:
Queues Processing Exception Reason |
Queues Queue Item Count |
There has been an issue with extracting fields from the Application Form. |
80 |
PDF File could not be read by the Virtual Worker |
3 |
Internal Review:
The system was reviewed internally by our Architecture Review Board (ARB). Minutes from the ARB meeting have been included in our response.
An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, e.g. names/contact details of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.
Response to your request for information 2 and 3:
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. This is because no complaints were identified in relation to this system.
This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested.
Client Advisor Knowledge Assist System:
Request for information 1 - 3:
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. The Client Advisor Knowledge Assist System was a proof of concept that never went live so no error reports or incident logs exist.
This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested.
We have included the Client Advisor Knowledge Assist System proof of concept report as this may be considered an internal evaluation report.
An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, e.g. names/contact details of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.
Questions 2 and 3 cannot be answered as they are not applicable in this instance as the system was a proof of concept that never went live.
About FOI
Social Security Scotland is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. The Scottish Government also publishes responses to requests. You can view the responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.