Field notes · Privacy operations
AI Data Mapping Assistant
This page teaches data mapping the slow way: what counts as a record, how long you keep it, and why the drawing fails before the software does. The assistant below does the fast part. It drafts your map in your browser, and you review every piece.
The question nobody asked the tool
I have read that ticket a hundred times. Not the dropdown-is-broken kind. The do-we-map-the-spreadsheet kind, the is-the-backup-a-system kind, the marketing-wants-to-keep-the-emails-just-in-case kind. The software worked. The mental model underneath it did not.
They were never about the tool. Nobody wrote in to say the dropdown was broken. They wrote in to ask: do I map the spreadsheet? Is the backup a system? Marketing wants to keep the emails just in case; is "just in case" a purpose? The software worked. The mental model underneath it did not.
So here is the distinction, in thirty seconds, because everything below depends on it. The inventory is the list: what personal information you hold, where it sits, why you have it. The map is the drawing: how it moves between those places. You cannot draw the movement before you list the things. Every failed mapping project I have watched tried to draw first, produced a beautiful diagram of nothing, and died in a shared drive.
The conversation everyone skips
Ask a room when customer data gets deleted and someone always answers fast: seven years, finance said so. Ask the same room about backups and watch the confidence drain out. Backups are the retention conversation everyone skips, because you cannot reach into last month's tape and delete one customer without deleting everyone.
The honest answer is less satisfying and more useful. You document the rotation. You let expiry ride the rotation, typically thirty to ninety days, and you write that down in the schedule so that when the CAI asks, the answer is a paragraph, not a shrug.
The simulator below is deliberately boring. Pick a record. It walks through the four stages every record lives through, plus the fifth card nobody draws: the backup copies. Tap any statute chip to read the actual provision behind the range.
The table is the work
Nobody will sell you a retention table, because the table is jurisdiction plus sector plus contract plus context, and anyone selling you a single number is selling you a lawsuit. What you can have instead: ranges, the statute behind each range, and the caveats that change it.
That is what the chips do. Each one names the provision, gives its working language, and links to the official text where one exists. Two of them carry most of the weight in this country. Law 25, article 23, made retention a duty in Quebec: once the purpose is fulfilled, destroy the information or anonymize it. PIPEDA, Schedule 1, clause 4.5, sets the federal floor: keep personal information only as long as necessary, set minimum and maximum periods, destroy what is no longer needed. Neither gives you a number. The number comes from your contracts, your limitation periods, and the CRA's six-year clock, which outlasts almost everything else in the building.
Red pencil: if your retention schedule lists a single fixed period per record with no caveats, it was written by someone who has never met your contracts. Ranges with reasons survive contact with reality. Fixed numbers do not.
A worked example
Café Nord is fictional. The mistakes are not. Walk through it step by step: three collection counters, the systems they feed, the third parties that touch the data, the backups nobody drew, and the destruction at the end that the law actually requires. Use the buttons or the arrow keys.
Export pack
Each file carries its legal framing inside it. A CSV that travels without its caveats becomes somebody's policy by accident.
Everything above teaches. This does. Answer four quick questions, or paste a recipe, and the assistant drafts your data map step by step, in your browser. You review each piece, fix what is wrong, and download the draft Excel. The guide stays open above if you need to check a retention range on the way. When the run finishes, your draft opens in the workspace below, ready for you to arrange by hand.
Draft for review, not legal advice.
This assistant builds a starting inventory for your Law 25 governance and retention-schedule work. Law 25 does not require a "data inventory" by name. What you get here is a draft your lawyer reviews and your team finishes.
Retention periods appear as ranges, each with the statute cited and an as-of date. Anything the tool cannot verify is flagged "verify" instead of given a number. None of this states that you are compliant.
Privacy: this page loads no third-party scripts. The tool watches its own network activity and shows the count beside this notice: 0 requests sent. The offline bundle is the strongest version of this promise. Download it, disconnect, and the full flow still works with the wifi off. Only the offline bundle claims without qualification that nothing leaves your machine.
Your map workspace
Your draft loads here the moment your assistant run finishes. Drag nodes to arrange them, right-click a node for options, and keep chatting with the assistant to refine the draft.
No draft yet.
Finish a run with the assistant above, confirm the review items, and your map will open here, ready to rearrange.
The part nobody wants to fund
Here is the thread I am leaving open on purpose. Everything above solves the drawing. Nothing above solves the rotting. Six months after the workshop, the spreadsheet has a new column, marketing bought a new tool, and nobody updated the map. I have never seen a company fix this with software. The ones that come close do something unglamorous: they put one human on a recurring calendar invite and give that person the authority to be annoying about it. Everything else is decoration.