Right to Information for AI: how citizens can question algorithmic decisions

Three ways to see it

1. 1

   The Right to Information in Pakistan rests on three statutes. The federal Right of Access to Information Act 2017 covers federal ministries and authorities. Punjab has the Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013, the strongest in the country with binding orders and a quasi-judicial commission. Sindh and KP have their own RTI laws of similar shape. Together they create a nationwide right for any citizen to demand information held by a public body. AI systems used by public bodies fall squarely inside this right, even when the system is operated by a private vendor on the public body's behalf.

2. 2

   What can a citizen ask under RTI about an AI decision that affected them? The model card. The training data sources. The bias audit results. The version of the model running on the date of the decision. The input features that were available to the model. The top-k features that contributed to the specific decision. The name and role of the human authorised to override. The override rate for that decision class. The appeal procedure and its average resolution time. None of this is trade secret if the decision has a public consequence. All of it is record under the law.

3. 3

   From the buyer's side, RTI changes how you draft contracts. You must require the vendor to keep records in a form that can be released without breaching their commercial confidentiality on truly proprietary aspects. The trick is to separate the model's logic and provenance, which can be disclosed, from the model's weights, which are usually proprietary. This is a solved problem: model cards plus reason codes plus audit logs satisfy almost every RTI scenario without ever publishing a weight. Make this separation explicit in the procurement contract or you will spend years in disputes.

The why-tree

Try this with Claude

Capstone challenge — three actions. (1) Look up your provincial RTI Act and bookmark the Information Commission's website. (2) Draft one RTI request using the template above for an actual decision you have received from a public AI system; do not send it yet, just draft it. (3) For one system you are responsible for, list three citizen questions you could not answer today, and start the work to be able to answer them within the statutory period.