Public administration
Applications, decisions, citizen enquiries: what is permissible, where the fundamental rights impact assessment applies, and why the duty to give reasons governs everything.
Where things sit
| Task | Classification |
|---|---|
| Classifying and routing citizen enquiries | unproblematic |
| Rendering official letters understandable | unproblematic, with review |
| Preparing meeting papers | unproblematic |
| Checking applications for completeness | limited to high, depending on effect |
| Producing draft decisions | high, always with full review |
| Deciding on benefits | high risk under Annex III |
| Handling freedom of information requests | high, with a redaction check |
Introduction
- 01
Start with communication
Classifying enquiries and rendering letters understandable. Immediate value, no decision effect.
- 02
Check the legal basis
For public bodies routinely Art. 6(1)(e) with a sectoral statutory basis, not legitimate interest.
- 03
Involve staff representation
Staff council rights are routinely engaged for systems capable of performance monitoring.
- 04
Only then decision support
With a fundamental rights impact assessment, documented oversight, and a route to reasons.
The duty to give reasons as the yardstick
An administrative act needs reasons naming the considerations that carried it. From that follows directly:
- A decision whose ground cannot be named in domain language cannot be justified and is therefore not tenable.
- "The system decided that way" is not a reason, not even as part of one.
- Discretionary decisions presuppose the exercise of discretion. A system exercises none.
- Where sectoral law permits fully automated decisions, that covers bound decisions with no discretionary scope only.
What must also be assessed
| Point | Basis |
|---|---|
| Fundamental rights impact assessment | AI Act, for public bodies at high risk |
| Registration | High-risk systems in the EU database |
| Data protection impact assessment | Art. 35 GDPR, sits alongside |
| Sectoral statutory basis | National and regional law |
| Staff representation | Where capable of performance monitoring |
| Procurement law | For buying the system itself |
| Accessibility | For citizen-facing interfaces |
Procurement
When buying an AI system, the evaluation is a human decision that is reasoned. AI-assisted preparation of bids is permissible but belongs named in the award record. And equal treatment here also means: a process handling structured bids better than unstructured ones systematically disadvantages.
Entry sheet: the public sector
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Entry sheet for the public sector
This sector's tasks by risk class, the points to settle beforehand, and the metrics the benefit shows up in.
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