Introduction

This collection of information tells you about some work we've done to create two bits of regulation as well as some digital assets for complying with that regulation through the use of AI.

The information is technical at times, but anyone reading this should be taking the time to learn and understand the concepts we are talking about, because we believe they are very important and powerful for the future of technology and regulation.

DISCLAIMER:

• This information reproduces documents published by government entities, but nothing in this repository should be taken to bind the New Zealand Government or any of its agencies or speak on its behalf.
• All statements not taken directly from public service source documents are attributable solely to Syncopate Lab and its founders, Tom Barraclough and Hamish Fraser.
• This site and https://docref.digital.govt.nz remain prototypes only and minor technical issues may still exist while it is transitioned to production.
• Generally speaking, text on this site has not been written with AI, unless the content is obviously AI-generated given the context, or explicitly stated.

List of pages

We recommend you go through the pages in this order:

1. A concise summary of what we've done and what this is all about: here
2. For a quick skim, the consolidated regulatory instruments:
   1. A draft API standard for the New Zealand public service (here).
   2. A draft consolidation of guidance and standards on identification management in New Zealand (here).
   3. A landing page for the Public Service AI Guidance (and repository of materials).
3. An explanation of the DocRef system, how it works, and why it is important: About DocRef.
4. An explanation of "model context protocol" (MCP) servers and the way we've used them with DocRef regulatory datasets to perform a kind of search referred to as "GraphRAG" (retrieval augmented generation using graph database structures) (About DocRef MCP servers).

Once you've had a chance to ground yourself in the basic concepts and the outputs we've produced, we recommend looking at the transparency materials associated with both of these outputs in more detail (Transparency Index).

Where is this work going next?

About Syncopate

At Syncopate, we believe that digital technologies and regulatory systems are already inseparable, and they will only become increasingly interdependent over time.

From our initial work on "rules as code", we have concluded that a defining issue in the coming decades will be how far legal, democratic and community oversight will be designed into the development, deployment and maintenance of digital systems.

We are building the products and services necessary for fostering this digital legal integration in efficient, systematic and responsible ways, and we are using those products to demonstrate how digital regulatory systems can be designed, developed and deployed.

Click here to sign up for our early testing programme or be notified when you can sign up for a DocRef account to enable cloud-based annotation and collaboration, DocRef collections, document editing and document publishing.

GCDO Alpha: next phase

Syncopate establishes "digital regulatory infrastructures" as the foundation for digital regulatory systems. Through this proof of concept, the Government Chief Digital Office ("GCDO") for New Zealand now has a digital regulatory infrastructure in place.

Going forward, we will be looking to expand the materials available through this system and to put in place the institutional and procedural arrangements required to establish it as a cross-government production asset for the long term.

In particular, we want to explore the potential of publishing collections of regulatory documents that sit across subject areas or agency boundaries, enabling people to comply with a range of interconnecting regulatory systems all at once – examples in this case include:

• the integration of privacy law and security standards into identification management materials;
• the integration of web publishing requirements from Digital.Govt.NZ into the materials used to guide an AI system on what the outputs it produces should look like.

The broad scope and potential impact for such work is significant.

A note on interoperability, portability and modularity

For this work, we have used specific AI providers and technical products. Our work has been designed to allow for information re-use in different formats without requiring the specific use of any particular product or service.

The only product that is not currently interchangeable is DocRef, although any system of granular pinpoint referencing could be used to achieve a similar result.

Syncopate is committed to the public interest and to the rule of law, which includes making DocRef and the datasets it produces available as widely as possible. If you have any questions about licensing or re-use of the system, particularly for public interest purposes, just reach out to us for a discussion.

Contact and feedback

You can contact us by email on contact@syncopatelab.com.

If you would like to tell us about a project you're working on, you can access our project enquiry form here or send us an email.

Click here to sign up for our early testing programme or be notified when you can sign up for a DocRef account to enable cloud-based annotation and collaboration, DocRef collections, document editing and document publishing.