Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology what safeguards are in place to ensure that his officials do not input (a) sensitive and (b) classified information into artificial intelligence tools.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
All civil servants are trained in appropriate information management practices for handling sensitive or classified information. We draw on a range of resources, published on GOV.UK, to inform our AI usage. For example the AI Playbook for the UK Government, the Ethics, Transparency and Accountability Framework, and the generative AI framework on GOV.UK which includes a section on using generative AI safely and responsibly.
OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE information can safely be included in prompts to AI tools that are hosted within the DSIT IT eco-system, or by providers with whom the department has an agreement in place around the secure processing of such data. For example, DSIT has an enterprise agreement with Microsoft to provide all staff with secure access to Copilot Chat and 1,500 staff with licenses to the cross-government Microsoft 365 Copilot experiment. Additional tool-specific guidance is provided to individuals at the point-of-use.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps the Government is taking to increase the resilience of telecommunications infrastructure in Northern Ireland, in the context of recent ransomware attacks in the last 12 months.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to ensuring the security and resilience of the UK's telecommunications infrastructure. The Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021 introduced a robust security framework throughout the United Kingdom and requires public telecoms providers to identify, reduce, and prepare for security and resilience risks, including ransomware attacks. Ofcom is responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance with this framework. The Government keeps its telecoms security and resilience policies under constant review to ensure evolving risks to UK telecommunications networks are effectively mitigated.