Provenance & Intent

Because the agency has no way to control what happens to a document before it arrives, the response signs each document where it does control it, at intake, recording the time of receipt and the submitter's identity. It records that the submission arrived and was unaltered after that point, and makes no claim about who originally authored it.

Because a verified credential proves who is submitting but says nothing about how the submission was prepared, the response keeps the two claims plainly apart: an independently attested identity sits beside a preparation-method declaration the submitter makes themselves, cryptographically bound to that identity but not separately verified. The reader can see at a glance which claim is vouched for and which is the submitter's own word.

Because a structured account of tool, version, task, and extent tells a decision-maker far more than a yes-or-no checkbox, the response opens with a single default for the common case and reveals the specific fields only once a submitter says they used AI assistance. Most people finish in one tap, and the detail appears only for the submissions where it informs how the entry should be read.

Because personhood is treated as a gradient rather than a single gate, the response attaches a visible assurance signal to each submission (email-verified, phone-verified, or ID-verified) for the analysts who read it, instead of forcing one submit-or-don't checkpoint. A submission that clears only a lower tier still goes through, carrying a signal that tells the analyst how much weight its personhood claim can bear.

The response is a guided intake that records timing and paste patterns as the submitter works. When it detects a paste, it offers a prompt ('Looks like you pasted from another source. Want to note where it came from?') the submitter can answer or skip. The information is gathered as a byproduct of building the submission, never as a gate the submitter must clear.

Because disclosure works here as a norm rather than as enforcement, the response is a voluntary 'Add a source to this part' control and a provenance note in the submitter's own words, never recorded by the system. The plain declaration ('I wrote this myself, based on my own experience') is the one affirmative act — Submit stays inactive until it is selected — and stays the fastest route to submit. Choosing not to show your working costs no extra steps.

Because an attestation only carries weight when it can be checked later or is backed by consequence, the response makes the declaration binding without verifying it up front. It ties each submission to an identity, where even a pseudonym is enough to catch a pattern of false attestation after the fact, and scales the consequence to what the process decides: informal reputational discounting for an ordinary comment, formal sanction for a royal-commission or planning submission. The request is framed as a norm ('most people tell us how their submission was prepared'), not a penalty under threat, and a verified-identity slot sits ready for the same form to switch on as a verified government digital ID becomes available.