Mayor: 'Large chunks' of Deloitte report was written by AI

Wellington mayor Andrew Little has said in a radio interview that a significant amount of a $435,000 Deloitte report on the council’s staffing levels was written by artificial intelligence, as the report's credibility comes under increasing scrutiny.

By Justin Wong of Local Democracy Reporting

The Future Fit Pōneke report released last November claimed the council had 330 excess staff, but it later emerged Deloitte had double-counted current employees with vacant roles and relied on three-year old employment data from the Taxpayers’ Union.

In a Tuesday interview on Newstalk ZB, Little said “large chunks” of the report were “written by AI”, but did not elaborate on the scale or which sections were produced that way.

He said the report offered some useful insight – particularly its finding that the council’s contract management systems were a “disaster” – but described the remainder as “frankly, just a waste of time”.

Little’s office referred a request for comment from Local Democracy Reporting to a paper submitted to a council meeting last week, which detailed further errors in the report – including Deloitte counting all employees at their full-time salary, regardless of the hours they worked, and overstating staffing expensed by $21.5 million.

The firm also assumed roles with "project" in the title were a duplicate job.

"The incorrect data usage means that the assumptions used to construct the recommendation to reduce the organisation by 330 FTE were inherently flawed," the council papers said.

A more accurate number would be 284, but that did not take other potential incorrect assumptions into account.

Deloitte has been asked for comment following Little’s Tuesday interview, but the firm has previously stood by the report.

"Deloitte uses a range of tools and technologies across its work, including AI-enabled tools where appropriate," a spokesperson said last week, adding a human needed to sign off any analysis, findings and conclusions.

"We are satisfied that the report's conclusions reflect the work performed and the professional judgement applied throughout the engagement."

– Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air