The Government of Alberta has spent the last year and a half refurbishing its digital systems, largely using US AI tools. Now, it’s telling other governments exactly how it did it.
The news: Alberta’s government has released a collection of technical white papers outlining how the province used AI tools from Anthropic and Google to update, secure, and review its digital infrastructure. Dubbed The Velocity Papers, the Province dropped the set of tools and documents on Monday, describing them as a roadmap that other governments could follow. The white papers are being released free of charge, open-source, and with step-by-step instructions.
From the source: “The Velocity Papers are the first defensible in-production blueprint for an agentic public service,” said Cole Cioran, a managing partner with IT advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group. “Their release as open source is not only an opportunity for the public service, but a windfall for every Canadian SME looking to build their own agentic advantage.”
Following the thread: The white papers come on the heels of 18 months of work at Alberta’s Ministry of Technology and Innovation, where staff has built and implemented a set of in-house AI tools. According to the ministry, a team of AI agents built using Anthropic’s Claude was used to review more than 466 million lines of code in 20 hours for errors and vulnerabilities. Those vulnerabilities were fixed after human review. By Alberta’s estimate, a similar, human-led process could have taken more than six years and cost upwards of $2 billion.
Final thought: Alberta has for the last several years been positioning itself as an AI-forward jurisdiction, welcoming data centre applications and encouraging public servants to adopt AI into their work. Alberta’s efforts were touted by Anthropic itself; the US company lauded the provincial government’s integration of AI into its digital infrastructure, calling it a “case study” for other governments.
Anthropic’s promotion of Alberta’s case study comes shortly after the US government temporarily froze all foreign access to Anthropic’s latest models, making it convenient timing for the US company to showcase its use by a Canadian province.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtsy Wikimedia Commons.