Why media authenticity matters for public sector trust: Raymond Lamphen at ADSO

As AI makes video and audio easier to create, alter and share, public institutions face a growing challenge: how do you make information accessible while also proving that information can be trusted?

At the annual ADSO dinner, Arbor COO Raymond Lamphen spoke about why trust must now sit alongside transparency, and how Media Provenance can help public institutions prove where official content came from and whether it has been altered.

At Arbor, we’re advancing Media Provenance to help public institutions prepare for a future where the authenticity of official content matters just as much as its accessibility.

Read Raymond’s full speech below:

 

 

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

For those I have not met before, I am Raymond Lamphen, COO of Arbor. I am very happy to be here again this evening together with my colleagues.

Last year, I stood here and shared a piece of my dream with you.

I spoke about opening up. About using technology not to replace people, but to create more space for people. And I spoke about transparency. About making the conversations and decisions that shape our communities accessible beyond the walls of the council chamber.

One year later, the dream is still exactly the same.

But the digital world around us is moving incredibly fast. AI is developing. The way we create and consume information is changing. Video and audio can be generated, edited and shared in ways that would have seemed almost impossible only a few years ago.

And this speed pushes all of us to keep up. Not simply to adopt every new technology that comes along, but to think ahead. To make sure that the systems we build today are ready for the reality of tomorrow. To be future proof.

Because if our dream is transparency, then making information available is only part of the responsibility. We also need to make sure that information can be trusted.

When citizens watch a council meeting, a statement from an elected representative, or a recording of an important public decision, they should be able to trust that what they are seeing is authentic. That it comes from the source it claims to come from. That it has not been manipulated along the way.

For organisations responsible for democracy and public information, I believe this will become increasingly important.

We have spent many years making public information more accessible. Now we need to make sure we protect its authenticity as well.

This is where Media Provenance comes in.

The idea behind it is actually very simple. When official media is created, we should be able to preserve information about where it came from and demonstrate its authenticity throughout its journey.

Think of it as a digital chain of trust. Not because we should distrust everything. But because transparency only works when people can trust what is being made transparent.

And I believe clerks and democratic institutions have an important role to play in this.

You already protect the integrity of the democratic process. You make sure meetings are properly documented. You make decisions accessible. You preserve the public record.

And increasingly, that public record is digital. Technology therefore has a responsibility too.

It should not only help us livestream, publish faster, create subtitles or reduce manual work. It should help us make sure that what we create today remains trustworthy tomorrow.

That, to me, is what being future proof really means. It is not about predicting every technology that will come next. It is about knowing what we want technology to protect.

And the dream is still the same. Open government. Accessible information.

Trustworthy information.If we can protect the authenticity of that voice as the digital world continues to change, we protect something much bigger than a video or a recording.

We protect trust. And trust is ultimately what makes transparency meaningful.

Thank you.