Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Municipality of Terneuzen

Copilot Chat is a generative AI tool that can be used by all municipal staff as an AI-powered assistant. It is part of the M365 suite of applications. Copilot Chat runs on various language models. Users can use it, for example, as a tool to help with writing or translating texts, as a source of inspiration during brainstorming sessions, or to generate images.

Last change on 19th of May 2026, at 14:25 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: Other algorithms
• Impact assessment: Field not filled in.
• Status: In use

General information

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Begin date

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Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

Copilot acts as an AI assistant that supports our staff in their day-to-day work. The assistant can help with a variety of tasks. One of its key applications is text editing. Texts can be improved, translated or adapted to suit the target audience. This improves the quality of our texts. Furthermore, staff save time which they can devote to their core tasks, thereby also enhancing the quality of those tasks. Other possible applications include summarising reports, acting as a digital sparring partner or serving as a conversation starter during a brainstorming session. Copilot Chat is designed to support individual staff members. There is no automated decision-making; we adhere to the ‘human-in-the-loop’ principle.

Considerations

We operate within the secure environment of our M365 licence. Compared to other AI assistants, this is one of the most secure options. By making this AI assistant available organisation-wide, we prevent shadow IT. After all, if we did not offer an AI assistant, we would run the risk of staff using unsafe, free tools of their own accord.

As the assistant supports individual employees in their work, the impact on the organisation and its processes is limited. Furthermore, as an organisation, we are also committed to promoting AI literacy, so that employees can use the tool provided to them in an informed and responsible manner.

We believe that the benefits – improved quality, time savings and the prevention of shadow IT – outweigh the limited risks involved.

Human intervention

Human intervention is a fundamental principle in the use of AI at Terneuzen Municipal Council. Copilot is an assistant that supports our staff. No tasks are (fully) automated, and there is no automated decision-making.

Risk management

Potential risks and how we mitigate them at Terneuzen Municipal Council:

- Data breach: if an employee enters personal data or other sensitive information into a prompt and Copilot Chat uses Bing to generate a response, we may lose control over this data. This risk is low, as it would require both irresponsible use by the employee and a search query specifying that an answer should be sought on the internet. We aim to prevent this risk by investing organisation-wide in AI literacy and by ensuring that employees never enter sensitive data into any AI tool.

- Internal data breach: there are known cases from other organisations where employees gained access to information from confidential documents via Copilot. This can be prevented by implementing data classification. As the risk only applies to Copilot premium licences, we have decided not to offer premium licences until our data management is in order.

- Misinterpretation of output: a well-known issue with AI assistants such as Copilot is that the tool can ‘hallucinate’. The output then contains incorrect information. In addition, generative AI often provides incomplete or oversimplified information. As we are not the developer or supplier, we cannot prevent this. However, we can ensure that our staff are AI-literate and know how to handle AI output correctly. Our organisation offers training courses to ensure this.

Legal basis

The European AI Regulation forms the basis of the local authority’s policy on the responsible development and use of AI and algorithms.

Operations

Data

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Technical design

Copilot Chat uses various large language models (LLMs) from OpenAI to understand human text and generate new text. When a search is carried out on the internet, Copilot uses the Bing search engine.

External provider

Microsoft