A fixed amount,written into the budget
The IT department of a city or a ministry receives a quote for an assistant, and the “inference” line is billed by usage, with no ceiling the finance department can write into the year’s budget. Your vendor’s tool calls a language model; Agent Libre serves that model in Canada for a fixed amount written in the contract. Citizens’ personal information is masked before it reaches the model, and every call is written to the log for the auditor.
Talk about your organizationWhat the public sector asks of an AI provider
Three requirements come up in the calls for tenders and risk assessments of public bodies.
An amount known before the budget vote
Council adopts the city’s budget in December; a ministry prepares its appropriations months before the fiscal year. A quote whose “inference” line changes every month does not get past the finance department, and the project waits for the next fiscal year.
Citizens’ information whose destination is known
An access-to-information request, a permit file or a complaint contains a person’s name, address and often their situation. Before having a model read those documents, Law 25 requires the organization to complete a privacy impact assessment, which asks in which country the text is processed, who can read it and how long it is kept.
An answer per department for the auditor
The internal auditor, the auditor general or a committee can ask which department used AI, on which documents and for what expense. A credit card statement in US dollars, in the name of an IT employee, answers none of those three questions.
What Agent Libre changes behind your tool
The assistant, the agent or the document processing stays your vendor’s or your team’s. That tool calls a language model; the model can come from Anthropic, from OpenAI or from Agent Libre, and the change happens inside the tool, with nothing to install in your departments.
A contract aligned with the fiscal year
The contract reserves a processing speed for all of your tools, and the amount holds for twelve months. At renewal it is revised from measured consumption, up or down, and the finance department receives that figure before preparing the next budget.
A quota and a report per department
Agent Libre’s gateway assigns a share of the reserved speed to each department or institution that uses the tool. The clerk’s office, urban planning and communications each have their quota, and the monthly report shows what each one consumed: that is what it takes to charge the expense to the right cost centre.
Citizens’ information masked before the model
Agent Libre’s gateway masks in transit the information you designate: names, addresses, file numbers, social insurance numbers. It writes every call to the log with the application, the department, the time and the volume, and your teams pull the reports themselves, as described on the Governance page.
Data in Canada
The model is hosted and operated in Canada, on Agent Libre’s servers, with no request sent to the model’s publisher or to a foreign provider. Requests are never used to train a model and nothing is kept beyond processing.
What public bodies do with their tools
Assistant on internal documents
An employee in human resources or the clerk’s office asks your vendor’s assistant what the telework policy, the collective agreement or the travel expense directive provides, and gets the answer with the passage cited. See Assistant on internal documents.
Document processing
Access-to-information requests to sort, permit forms to key in, citizens’ mail to route to the right department: your vendor’s tool extracts the fields and summarizes each item, in batches, before the offices open. See Document processing.
Service to citizens
A front-line agent, put in place by your vendor, answers questions about collection schedules, the tax bill or the status of a permit application, and hands over to an employee as soon as the request falls outside the planned scope. See Customer service.
What is added for a hospital, a college or a defence supplier
The documents the tool sends to the model change from one network to the next, and so do the rules. Here is what each one adds to its checklist.
Clinical records processed without the patient’s name
A medical records clerk has clinical records processed by their tool; a quality team has incident reports classified. The name, date of birth and health insurance number serve neither of those tasks, and the gateway masks them before sending. The rules specific to the health network apply on top of Law 25; the institution decides which documents may leave the clinical record, and the inference provider does not make that decision in its place.
Thousands of students, a bill that stays the contract’s
A CEGEP or a university puts its vendor’s assistant in front of students for questions about registration, timetables and financial aid: thousands of users, most of whom arrive the same week of August. The term’s amount stays the contract’s, whatever their number. Intervention plans and student records, often of minors, are masked before they reach the model, and the rest of the file is processed in Canada.
A tender read without leaving the country
A defence contractor has its tool read tenders, technical quotes and contractual requirements it cannot pass on to a foreign provider. With Agent Libre behind the tool, the text is processed on servers in Canada and the hosting provider is named. The list of documents that may go through it is drawn up clause by clause, from the contract with the contracting authority; Agent Libre claims no security clearance.
What each team decides before connecting the tool
Four decisions rest with the organization before changing the model behind the tool. Each one has its owner.
Decide which budget the expense is charged to: the department that uses the tool, or IT. The only figure to establish is the reserved speed; ask for the free 24-hour to one-week audit before setting it, so that you start from the real consumption of your current tools rather than from a vendor’s estimate.
Draw up the list of information the tool can send to the model without hurting the result, and of what the gateway must mask, starting from a real permit file or a real access request. Your privacy impact assessment rests on that list and on the location of the servers, documented on the Privacy page.
Check with your vendor that its tool lets you change the model’s address and key: those are the only settings to change, and some turnkey tools do not offer it. Then plan two weeks where the tool queries both models side by side on your own documents, before switching an entire department.
Agree from the start on the report you will want to see: per department, per application, per month. The gateway records those fields on every call, provided they have been named; naming the applications and departments when the tool is connected avoids reclassifying months of logs when the audit comes.
What we get asked on this topic
Does the model read the administrative French of by-laws and directives?
It reads and writes in French and in English, and understands the everyday vocabulary of by-laws, directives and administrative correspondence. Quality on your own texts is judged on your documents: ask your vendor to have it read a directive and a template letter before switching the department over.
What does the model see when an employee submits an access request or a citizen’s file?
The text the tool sends it, once it has passed through Agent Libre’s gateway, which has masked the fields your team designated. The model answers, the request is erased, and none of it was used for training. The hosting provider and the location of the servers are named on the Privacy page.
What happens at tax bill season, when citizens’ requests double?
Requests wait their turn, a few seconds more each, with no cut-off and no fees. If the peak returns every year on the same date, the reserved speed is revised at renewal, and the next fiscal year’s amount takes it into account.
What does it cost if three more departments adopt the tool during the year?
Nothing more until renewal. The new departments share the reserved speed, with a quota each, and requests wait a little longer at peak hours. The next contract starts from measured consumption, and its amount is known before the next budget vote.
Can a defence supplier submit its contract documents to the service?
Agent Libre claims no security clearance and no certification. The model is open-weights: Agent Libre runs it on its own servers in Canada, with no call to its publisher, and the location is documented. The decision to submit a given tender or quote rests with you and with the clauses of your contract with the contracting authority.
See also
Governance and compliance
The monthly report, the inventory of AI tools and the rule review your compliance team produces from the gateway, with no request to IT.
Internal document assistant
What each team decides before putting a model served in Canada behind the assistant that answers from your policies, procedures and contracts.
What “hosted in Canada” actually means
What an organization must check behind the phrase, and what Agent Libre documents about it.
Your company has two supply chains
The first one you already know. Materials come in, they are transported, stored, transformed, delivered. Every step has a supplier, a lead time, a unit cost. When the margin tightens, you walk down that chain step by step, and you generally know where to look.
The second one moves information instead of materials. A price request comes in and becomes a quote. An order comes in and becomes a production order, an invoice, a confirmed delivery. A site report becomes a change order, or it does not. This chain runs through every one of your departments and it employs a large share of your people.
The 24-hour to one-week audit
We measure your actual consumption at your current provider: who calls what, what it costs, and what is leaving your walls. Free, no commitment, and the report is yours even if you go no further.