TL;DR

Scottish Government civil servants say they are struggling under a rising volume of parliamentary questions and freedom of information (FOI) requests, some apparently written with AI. According to internal posts The Scotsman obtained through FOI and reported on Monday 12 October, MSPs have been lodging what look like AI-generated questions in batches of 20 or more.

What staff are saying

The comments come from Saltire, the civil service’s internal message board. One poster said the government was now “working against technology rather than benefiting from it”, because large numbers of requests are easy to generate and submit. Each may be legitimate on its own, they wrote, but together they can tie up staff of varying seniority in multiple teams for days at a time, and the volume is “starting to hinder the work of government”.

Others described the practical cost. One official, working alone on the SNP’s flagship pledge of GP walk-in centres, said senior leaders had requested 27 different lines, briefings and papers from them within three days: “I can deliver the policy or I can report internally. I cannot do both.” Another said a colleague pulled onto an FOI response could not complete checks needed for payments to farmers, adding that the request itself concerned farmer support.

The claims are the staff’s own; The Scotsman does not say how the AI-generated questions were identified, and one poster describes them only as appearing to be AI-written.

The wider FOI picture

The FOI strain has been building for years. The Scottish Government’s own publication pages show annual requests almost twice as high in 2024 as in 2017. Scotland’s Information Commissioner, David Hamilton, said last month that Scottish public bodies received a record 111,241 requests in 2025-26, a 13% annual rise, while appeals to his office climbed 83%.

A government spokesman pointed to its five-year change plan to 2031, which promises a leaner organisation that cuts bureaucracy by investing in skills and technology. One staff member went further, urging investment in AI that can search government systems and draft briefing notes.

Looking forward

The complaint mirrors others we have covered: FOI pressures at Durham council, and GP practices facing long AI-written complaints. In our view, the logical end point is AI answering requests that AI helped write, which may cut the workload but does little for the quality of scrutiny. Parliaments and FOI regimes designed before generative AI may need rules on volume and disclosure, rather than leaving officials to absorb the cost.