What AI can and cannot do for a DC office

Three ways to see it

1. 1

   Reduce a deputy commissioner's daily work to its first principles and you find five primitives. Reading: notes, files, FIRs, gazettes, complaints. Writing: notings, summaries, demi-officials, press releases, condolence letters. Deciding: recommending an action, refusing one, escalating to commissioner. Convening: summoning a contractor, calling a coordination meeting, hosting a delegation. Witnessing: walking a katchi abadi, attending a jalsa, certifying a relief distribution. AI can meaningfully help with reading and writing. It can be a useful drafting partner for deciding. It cannot convene or witness. The minute we mistake the boundary, we get into trouble.

2. 2

   Take reading first. A modern AI model can ingest a 60-page Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rule book, a 14-page contractor proposal, and a 4-page complaint, and within a minute give you a comparison: which clauses of the proposal contravene which rules. The officer does not have to spend an hour skimming. The officer does have to verify, because the model will sometimes confidently cite Rule 38 when the relevant rule is Rule 36. Treat the model the way a junior section officer treats a draft from a probationer: useful, fast, and absolutely requiring a senior eye before signature.

3. 3

   Writing is the area where the time saved is largest and the risk best understood. A first draft of a noting on a flood relief disbursement, a condolence letter to a martyr's family, a press release after a successful price-control raid, a circular to all ACs in the division about Ramazan bazaars: each takes 20 to 40 minutes when written from scratch and 5 to 10 minutes when edited from a model's draft. Officers report that the model's bilingual output, when politely corrected for tone, often sounds closer to standard noting style than what an over-tired officer produces at 9 PM.

The why-tree

Try this with Claude

AI-edge prompt to try this week: 'I am an Assistant Commissioner in a Punjab tehsil. I will paste a citizen complaint about a Patwari demanding bribes for a fard. Draft a balanced noting for my SDM that (a) recommends a preliminary inquiry under Punjab Land Revenue Act, (b) protects the complainant's identity, (c) cites the relevant section, (d) suggests an interim measure for the citizen. Write in formal English first, then mirror in Urdu Naskh. Flag any clause where you are unsure of current law.'