Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what (a) algorithmic and (b) other automated decision making systems her Department uses; and for what purposes.

Defra is using algorithms for land use mapping at a national scale which include:

• A Crop Map of England is produced annually to classify crop cover for England. The system uses algorithms to classify satellite data based on statistical and ground truthing information collected during the growing season.

• Peatland map: Deep learning algorithms are used to detect moorland grips from aerial photography. The algorithms are applied to provide a ‘live’ map of grips in peatlands in England and insight into peatland restoration work.

To some extent automated processes are used to complete transactions. But decisions are still governed by the policy lead, budget holder (or other) approvals. There is no independent, algorithmic logic making choices without human approval. Predictive analytics is only used at aggregate level. Individuals are not profiled.