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This is a prototype vision of how a future government service could work. It's not a real service yet, but we're exploring what it could look like. Your feedback will help shape the real service.

FOI Redaction Walkthrough

Step-by-step guide to experiencing AI-powered PII detection and redaction for FOI requests

Try AI-Powered FOI Redaction

10 minutes to see AI automatically detect and redact personal information

No deployment needed. Upload a sample FOI document and watch AI identify names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails instantly.
No technical knowledge required

This walkthrough guides you step-by-step through uploading an FOI response document and reviewing AI-detected personal information. Perfect for FOI officers, information governance teams, and anyone evaluating AI for reducing manual redaction work.

What you'll do

In this 10-minute walkthrough, you'll:

  1. Access the redaction interface - Find your deployed AI redaction service (2 minutes)
  2. Download a sample FOI document - Get a realistic FOI response to test with (1 minute)
  3. Upload and process the document - Watch AI detect PII in real-time (2 minutes)
  4. Review detected PII with confidence scores - See what the AI found and how confident it is (3 minutes)
  5. View redacted output - See the document with PII replaced by redaction markers (2 minutes)

Before you start

Important You must have already deployed the FOI Redaction scenario to your Innovation Sandbox account.

Deploy the FOI Redaction scenario if you haven't already. Deployment takes 4-6 minutes.

Sample documents check

Ready Sample data is pre-loaded and ready to use.

What you'll learn

For FOI officers

  • How AI reads FOI response documents
  • Which types of PII can be automatically detected
  • Time saved vs manual line-by-line review
  • Accuracy and confidence scores for each detection
  • When human review is still needed

For information governance managers

  • Potential processing time reduction (80% time savings)
  • Volume of FOI requests that could benefit
  • Compliance risk reduction (fewer missed PII)
  • Return on investment calculation
  • Integration with existing FOI workflows

Sample documents you'll use

We've prepared 3 realistic FOI response documents representing common request types:

Personal information we detect

The AI automatically identifies these types of personal information (PII):

  • Person names - Full names, first names, surnames
  • Addresses - UK postal addresses including postcodes
  • Phone numbers - Mobile, landline, including area codes
  • Email addresses - Personal and work email addresses

In addition, the system can detect UK-specific identifiers like National Insurance numbers.

The wow moment

After you upload an FOI response, you'll see AI automatically:

  • Find all PII locations - Even across multiple pages and sections
  • Show confidence scores - 95-99% accuracy on typed documents
  • Generate redacted output - PII replaced with markers like [REDACTED: NAME]
  • Preserve document structure - Everything else remains readable

All in under 30 seconds. No manual highlighting. No missed personal details. No transcription errors.

Think about your council

How many FOI requests does your council process annually?

Consider the time savings. Our example calculation:

Current state
500 FOI requests/year × 30 minutes manual redaction = 250 hours/year
With AI redaction
80% auto-redaction, 20% manual review = 50 hours/year
Time freed
200 hours saved for complex exemptions and policy work
Annual cost benefit
200 hours × £25/hour = £5,000 saved per year

Committee language: "Implementing AI redaction reduces FOI processing time by 80%, freeing 200 hours annually while improving compliance by ensuring consistent PII detection."

Start walkthrough

Takes approximately 10 minutes

Need help?

If you're stuck, check the troubleshooting section or contact us.