Algorithm recognises and anonymises personal and financial data in documents for publication

Municipality of Oirschot

Among other things, the algorithm recognises and anonymises (personal) data and confidential financial data in documents before they are published.

Last change on 8th of July 2025, at 13:26 (CET) | Publication Standard 1.0

• Publication category: High-Risk AI-system
• Impact assessment: Field not filled in.
• Status: In development

General information

Theme

Organisation and business operations

Begin date

Field not filled in.

Contact information

[e-mail]

Responsible use

Goal and impact

The anonymisation software is used to give substance to transparency on the one hand and the necessary protection of the individuals and companies to whom documents relate on the other.

Considerations

The alternative is manual deletion of personal data. This is not feasible in practice. Using the tool takes work off your hands.

Human intervention

The documents anonymised by the software can be checked by an employee after completion. The algorithm itself is retrained periodically.

Risk management

Fully automated anonymisation is considered too great a risk by the Oirschot municipality. A solution was therefore chosen that speeds up the process but leaves the final decision with a human.

Legal basis

Open Government Act and the AVG

Operations

Data

personal data, e.g. mail address, address details or signature

Technical design

Smart features, such as set rules or templates, make it possible to anonymise per document or as a bulk. In this way, you can also set the method and degree of anonymisation of commonly used (standard) documents. The software then uses pattern recognition and Natural Language Processing to search for names, addresses, dates of birth, specific set words, signatures or regular expressions (such as e-mail, IBAN, BSN).