A BC + AI public-interest initiative
Working draftv0.2.0 · UpdatedWhat we power. Who benefits. What stays here.
British Columbia has started deciding which large data-centre projects may advance toward scarce clean electricity. The next step is to make the public bargain around ownership, resources, rights, local capability and delivered benefit visible.
The project examines private, public, academic, community and Indigenous-relevant data-centre and compute infrastructure through a public-interest lens. Public-access compute is one possible outcome, not the complete meaning of public compute.
15
normalized registry tables
165
described registry fields
4
explicit disclosure classes
The argument
B.C. has real machinery for deciding which large data-centre requests may advance. The missing layer is one understandable public view of ownership, resources, rights, promises, performance and change over the project’s life.
When a project asks for scarce clean electricity, the public should be able to see what it is powering, who controls it, who carries the cost and what durable value remains in British Columbia.
Five public tests
The questions are simple enough to remember and demanding enough to expose where a proposal is specific, incomplete or asking the public to take a great deal on faith.
Identify the facility owner, beneficial owner, operator, parent and controlling entities, related phases and material changes in control.
Makes visible
Facility identity · Ownership and control · Material changes
Keep requested, allocated, contracted, connected and actual electricity separate. Report water, cooling, heat, backup generation and environmental impacts with defined boundaries.
Makes visible
Electricity · Water and cooling · Environment
Make project-specific electricity, grid, municipal-service, emergency-response, monitoring and decommissioning costs visible and assign responsibility clearly.
Makes visible
Grid upgrades · Infrastructure contributions · Financial security
Track permanent work, wages, apprenticeships, procurement, research, companies, public and SME compute access, sovereign capability and delivered outcomes.
Makes visible
Jobs and procurement · Compute access · Commitments and performance
Distinguish First Nations governments and rights holders, local governments, the Province, BC Hydro, regulators, federal bodies, communities, proponents and qualified professionals.
Makes visible
Authority context · Authorized Nation-controlled disclosure · Approvals
The B.C. position
Calling the current process nothing would be false. Calling it a complete lifecycle accountability framework would be equally convenient.
B.C. already has
B.C. still needs
The first column describes current law, policy and process at a high level. The second column contains BC + AI recommendations, not legal requirements.
Two practical tools
The first release is deliberately a schema and working toolkit, not an official government registry or a machine that awards virtue points to server buildings.
A proposed public data standard and evidence system for ownership, resources, capability, commitments, compliance and material change.
Public route planned at /public-compute/registry · Delivery issue #1992
A structured evidence, authority, gate, condition and monitoring system for reviewing a data-centre proposal through its lifecycle.
Public route planned at /public-compute/decision-toolkit · Delivery issue #1994
Disclosure
The project is not arguing that every byte belongs online. It is arguing that public consequences need a visible disclosure decision instead of disappearing behind one universal confidential stamp.
Facility-level information needed for public accountability, with source and effective-date context.
Still carry source IDs and source status.
Information useful at a regional or system level but unsafe or misleading at excessive granularity.
Small-N geographic roll-ups can identify a single proposal. When they can, drop to not-disclosed.
Information withheld or generalized for legitimate privacy, security, privilege, critical-infrastructure or narrow commercial reasons.
Ordinary statutory and commercial confidentiality only. If the material is Nation-controlled, use PC-DSC-004 instead, even if a contract also marks it confidential.
Information whose collection, interpretation, use, retention and publication is governed by the relevant Nation or authorized body.
Default: do not collect, commit, or publish. Issue #1995 and PC-REV-001 own the pathway. Agents do not invent disclosure rules to 'be helpful.'
Review status
A working public-interest project should say what has been reviewed, what still needs qualified judgment and what autonomous agents are explicitly prohibited from inventing.
The canonical source, claims, terminology, proposition and authority pack is merged. It remains subject to updates when primary sources change.
Nation-specific pathways and disclosure rules require funded, Nation-led review. No autonomous completion.
Hearing duties, water authorization, corporate-control disclosure and adoption status require legal review.
Tariffs, interconnection, facility metrics, noise, backup generation and emissions need qualified review.
Public projections and claims about sovereignty, administration and lawful access need privacy and security review.
Interactive tools, tables, workbooks, diagrams and publications need automated and human accessibility review.
Version path
A registry without maintenance is a spreadsheet with political ambitions. The work becomes public infrastructure only when corrections, versions, review and stewardship survive the launch day.
Canonical sources, claims, terminology, authority and registry schema.
Position paper and permanent project hub.
Decision workbook, public registry explorer and guided toolkit.
Corrections, versions, safe disclosure, retention, review and export controls.
Source-backed facility records, ongoing maintenance, expert review and accountable releases.
Governance
A public record earns trust by showing how it changes. These are the operating rules for versions, corrections, evidence states and disclosure, adopted with release 0.2.0 of the working draft.
Governance release: the public governance contract, correction and dispute policy, verification states, disclosure projection rules, staleness model and this version history.
Initial public working draft: the project hub at /public-compute, the canonical research and source pack, and the registry schema prototype with its fictional demonstration workbook.
No public corrections yet. When one is published it appears here with the affected record IDs, the outcome and the reason.
Anyone: proponents, governments, Nations, communities, researchers, journalists and the public. Name the value or sentence, say what is wrong and point to checkable evidence.
Response targets are goals for a volunteer-stewarded prototype, not contractual guarantees. Corrections use the existing contact route below; the caution about sensitive material applies there too.
A subject of sourced public-interest reporting can obtain a correction of errors, not a veto over accurate sourced material. While a credible material dispute is unresolved, the affected value carries a visible disputed state.
Protected and Nation-controlled values are withheld by a single server-side projection layer before any page, payload, export, feed or index is generated. Nation-controlled classification outranks every generic public flag, and an expired or withdrawn disclosure authority withholds the value again. Material changes append to the version history; prior values are never silently overwritten. Automated tests exercise each of these refusals.
Verification states
Every public value keeps its source ID, effective period, retrieval date, review date and verification state as separate fields. They are never collapsed into one unexplained confidence score.
Method and participation
BC + AI is publishing a working framework and evidence tools. We are not a regulator, utility, Crown decision-maker, local government, Nation government or substitute for qualified legal and engineering review.
Bring a missing piece
We are looking for source corrections, municipal and utility expertise, water and cooling review, privacy and security review, accessibility review and properly scoped, compensated First Nations governance and data-governance participation.
Contribute evidence or reviewDo not send confidential, personal, security-sensitive or Nation-controlled information through the general contact route.
BC + AI has been writing about electricity, water and sovereign compute since before the registry existed. These are the published pieces the tools answer to.