Question Period Note: mPersona Application

From November 2023 until January 2024, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) tested the use of generative Artificial Intelligence on a free, publicly available, open source tool called mPersona, based on the recommendation of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). On January 22, 2024, a media request was received from LaPresse indicating that the FINTRAC CTO was also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Symaiotics Corporation, which owned the mPersona tool.

• In the fast-paced area of digital technologies, government departments work to leverage expertise across departments, share lessons learned and best practices
• In this instance, PSPC was looking to better understand how Artificial Intelligence could be used as a tool to help improve delivery of pay-related services
• To do so, PSPC leveraged a free, open source, publicly available, web-based tool that FINTRAC was using
• In this experiment, no money was exchanged, nor was there a contract or Memorandum of Understanding

If pressed on PSPC’s actions:

• Only PSPC employees used the mPersona tool; no external consultants, contractors, or technical resources were involved
• PSPC officials were in the process of completing their assessment of generative AI  (leveraging the mPersona tool) when they were made aware that FINTRAC’s CTO was also the CEO of Symaiotics Corporation, which created mPersona. PSPC had enough evidence to show the benefits of generative AI and stopped using the mPersona tool
• To be clear, there are no procurement integrity issues with the use of this open source, free, web-based technology

In the fall 2023, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) engaged with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC)’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Janak Alford, as FINTRAC was leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) as part of its operations and PSPC wanted to better understand the technology to determine if it could help support pay operations, specifically backlog reduction.

From November 2023 until January 2024, up to 34 PSPC employees (no consultants) tested the functionality of Generative AI that was made available through the open source (i.e., no cost), publicly available tool mPersona. It is not a Generative AI engine, but provides an interface to multiple AI solutions such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This web-based version only required the creation of username and password and was accessed from a public web browser.

Testing was scheduled to wrap by the end of January 2024 with a determination if, in fact, Generative AI could be a useful tool for the pay center. mPersona used only publicly available information or synthetic (dummy) data and the tool was never  installed in the GC technical environment.

On January 22, 2024, PSPC officials were informed through a media request from LaPresse that Mr. Alford was also CEO of the Symaiotics Corporation. This information had not been previously disclosed to PSPC.

Within the week of this news, PSPC closed out the engagement with FINTRAC and concluded its use of the mPersona tool altogether.

PSPC conducted its own internal procurement integrity investigation on Mr. Alford, his company, and existing PSPC contracts and found no wrongdoing.

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