There are fears Gloucestershire residents’ data could be at risk of being accessed by the US Government.

The UK is heavily reliant on American tech firms for cloud services which allows the remote storage and processing of data.

And with Gloucestershire County Council planning to modernise its services and rely more on artificial intelligence questions have been raised over what this could mean for residents’ data.

Councillor Craig Horrocks (G, Rodborough) raised the issue at last week’s corporate overview and scrutiny committee as a new £3.4m overhaul programme which includes more use of AI was discussed.

He praised the work the council is doing in increasing its productivity with technology but raised concerns about data security because of American legislation which could force American firms to hand over data belonging to UK citizens to the US Government.

“I don’t see any evidence of a focus on data security,” Cllr Horrocks said.

He said it was “particularly concerning” as elsewhere in Europe there is “a move away from US-based systems to either self-hosted open source systems or European-hosted systems”.

“Because the Cloud Act in America means if America warrants are pushed forward our data is not safe,” he said.

He explained that the data does not have to be stored in the US.

“Any company that is served a warrant, for example, Microsoft, by the US Government to look at data held on Microsoft systems through MIcrosoft AI, they have no ability to refuse that,” he said.

“My concern is that if we are going further into the Microsoft AI route that will get baked into a working practice which will almost inevitably go forward into the post-local government reorganisation.

“Has any consideration been given, not just that, because there are other data security issues as well.”

Deputy chief executive Nina Philippidis said it was “absolutely” a good point to raise and the issue is something the council’s data and IT teams spend a lot of time thinking about.

“Bearing in mind, this isn’t the start of our AI journey,” she said. “We have already been using Copilot in the organisation.

“We are already using Magic Notes and clearly it is looking at social work data, so again, we have had to spend an awful lot of time working through those issues to make sure we are fully compliant.”

She recognised Cllr Horrocks’ point that “things are changing rapidly” and that it is something they are “keeping a very close eye on”.

“We won’t be doing anything that puts residents’ data at risk,” she concluded.

Cllr Horrocks replied arguing that “you can’t help but because of the Cloud Act and I’d also say there are many European national and local governments that are very rapidly moving away from it because they are concerned.”

Ms Philippidis said she would take his points and discuss them with the team.