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ChatGPT and personal data in municipalities: what may go in the prompt?

Rewriting a letter or summarising an objection is usually fine; pasting in the personal data is not. Task by task, what comes out before you paste.

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Quick answer

In a municipality the task can usually go into ChatGPT; the personal data cannot. You can make a letter easier to read, summarise an objection or answer a council question without the citizen service number, name, address, file number and the details that make someone identifiable. What never belongs in a prompt: the citizen service number (BSN), benefits data, anything from youth care or debt counselling, health data and the contents of a case file. Which ChatGPT you use matters too: a free personal account is not an environment the municipality has set up, and which tool is allowed is for your municipality to decide, not a property of the tool.

01

Keep the task, but take the identifying data out before you paste

02

BSNs, benefits, youth care, debt counselling and health never belong in a prompt

03

A free personal account and an environment set up by the municipality call for two different decisions

04

Even without a name, someone can be identifiable from an address, a file number or the situation itself

05

Which tool is allowed is for your municipality to decide; when in doubt, ask your data protection officer

A caseworker in the benefits department has to rewrite a letter about a repayment in plain language. The letter is legally correct and unreadable. She opens ChatGPT, pastes in the whole letter and within a minute has a version the recipient will understand. At the top of the letter were a name, an address, a citizen service number and the amount.

The task was fine. The personal data did not need to be there. That is the whole answer: in a municipality the task can usually go into an AI tool, but the data about the resident cannot. What exactly has to come out depends on what you are doing.

Why does this matter more in a municipality?

Because the text you handle on an ordinary day is almost always about someone. A benefit, an objection, a report to the neighbourhood team, an application for a parking permit. Some of it is special-category or highly sensitive: health, debts, a family situation in youth care. And the citizen service number (BSN) appears on nearly every document the municipality sends.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority received several breach notifications in which employees had put personal data into an AI chatbot, and advises organisations to set clear rules on whether this is allowed and with which data. A municipality also has the BIO, the baseline information security standard for Dutch government, which calls for classification and careful handling of residents' data. What that means for AI use is covered in our piece on AI under the BIO and NEN 7510.

This is not about you being the weak spot. You use the tool because it makes the letter better. The only question is what goes into the tool along with it.

Which ChatGPT are you actually using?

There is no single ChatGPT. A free personal account runs under consumer terms: the input can be used to improve the model unless you switch that off yourself, and the municipality has no data processing agreement covering it. OpenAI states on its enterprise privacy page that its business environments do not use input for training by default. That is a different product with different terms, even though the screen looks the same. The difference is explained in free versus business AI accounts.

Which version you may use is for your municipality to decide. Many municipalities have allowed Copilot and not yet decided anything about ChatGPT. "No decision yet" does not mean it is allowed; it means nobody has looked at it. Until somebody does, no text with personal data should go in.

In municipalities that work with BeeSensible, the municipality's decision appears in the browser when you open an AI tool: allowed, limited use with a condition, no decision yet or not allowed with the alternative named. Usually you can carry on; only for a tool that is not allowed may your municipality have set things up so that you cannot continue.

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AllowedUnder reviewNot allowedAll tools
Search by tool, vendor, domain or former name…
1,012 tools
DeepSeek
Critical · 90/100
Not allowed
Otter.aiNew
High · 68/100
No decision yet
Grok
High · 67/100
Not allowed
ChatGPT
High · 62/100
Allowed
Perplexity
Medium · 55/100
No decision yet
HeyGen
Medium · 53/100
No decision yet

Every tool, scored for risk

Over 1,000 AI tools, each scored from Low to Critical. Nothing is approved or blocked until someone decides.

More about AI Governance

What comes out, per task?

The rule of thumb from our article on what you can and cannot share with AI applies here too: if you would not email this to a stranger outside the municipality, it does not belong in a chatbot. In a municipality, this is what that looks like task by task.

TaskWhat you want to pasteWhat comes outHow you still do the task
Rewrite a letter in plain languageThe whole letterName, address, BSN, case number, amount, datesPaste only the paragraphs that read badly, with placeholders like [name] and [amount]
Summarise an objectionThe objection as submittedName, address, reference, date of birth and details that make the situation recognisableDescribe the argument, not the person: "the objector argues the deadline was too short"
Answer a council questionThe question and the file behind itResidents' cases used as examplesWork from the public documents and the policy, not the file
Write up a neighbourhood team meeting noteYour notesEverything: it concerns a family, health or debtsNot in a tool that has not been approved for this; ask the data protection officer (DPO) which approved option there is
Draft an email to a residentThe previous email threadName, address, file number, the substance of the caseDescribe the kind of message: "a friendly reminder that an application is incomplete"

The three ways to take data out of a prompt (remove, replace and mask) are covered with examples in the prompt redaction guide. For a letter, replacing with a placeholder works best: the tool still understands the structure, and the real data stays with the municipality.

What if the name is already gone?

An employee in the permits department asks a chatbot to summarise an objection, having neatly removed the name. What remains: the address, the reference of the decision and the sentence "as the only bakery on the church square, my business is disproportionately affected". In a municipality of twelve thousand residents, that identifies the objector.

Removing a name does not automatically make someone anonymous. An address, a file number, a date of birth or the situation itself can together point to one person. How that works, and why it happens more easily in a small municipality than in a large city, is explained in our article on quasi-identifiers. So look at the whole text before you paste, not just the name at the top.

If the situation stays recognisable even without the data, the objection does not belong in a tool that has not been approved for case work. That is no great loss: summarising five pages yourself takes ten minutes, and the file stays where it belongs.

How do you spot it while you work?

A list in your head works until it gets busy. At half past four, with three letters still to go, a BSN slips through. That is why it helps if sensitive data is highlighted while you type or paste, before you send.

BeeSensible highlights sensitive data such as a BSN, an IBAN or a name while you write a prompt, in the tools you already work in. You choose what to do with it: mask it, remove it or leave it, unless your municipality has set masking on paste or on send to "Always on". What you type is not stored, and an admin sees only counts, never your text. What it does exactly is on the See page, and the rest of the subject is under AI governance.

Tomorrow the caseworker in the first paragraph pastes in only the paragraphs that read badly, with [name] and [amount] in place of the real data. The letter comes out just as well, and the repayment case stays where it belongs: with the municipality.

FAQ

Common questions

May I use ChatGPT as a municipal employee?

Your municipality decides that, not the tool. Some municipalities have allowed Copilot and not yet decided anything about ChatGPT; others have set up a business ChatGPT environment. Check what has been decided about the tool before you use it, and in any case do not use a free personal account for text that contains personal data.

May a citizen service number go into ChatGPT?

No. A citizen service number (BSN) makes someone directly identifiable, and the municipality may only use it for the purpose for which it was issued. In a prompt it is almost never needed: the letter does not get any better with the real number in it. Take it out or replace it with a placeholder before you paste.

May I use AI to summarise an objection letter?

Summarising the argument is often fine; the person behind it does not belong in the prompt. Remove the name, address, reference, date of birth and case number, and describe the situation in general enough terms that the objector cannot be identified. If the situation itself stays recognisable, for instance because it concerns the only business of its kind in the village, do not use a tool that has not been approved for that.

Is it safe once I remove the name?

Not always. An address, a file number, a date of birth or a combination of details (single parent, three children, street name, on benefits since March) can still make someone identifiable, especially in a small municipality. Look at the whole text, not just the name.

What if I pasted personal data by accident?

Report it to the data protection officer or through the procedure your municipality has for this. Personal data in a chatbot can be a data breach, and the Dutch Data Protection Authority has received notifications about exactly this. Reporting it is not a confession; it is how the municipality can assess what needs to happen.

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