SoftSim
Axcess1
← Back to siteDownload brochure (PDF)Brochure en français (PDF)
100% Canadian-developed · Développé à 100 % au Canada

Axcess1The Canadian Agentic-AI Platform for Access to Information & Privacy

A complete, bilingual, TBS-compliant ATIP system with AI agents built in. The agents triage new requests, read and classify the records, propose exemptions with the right clause, suggest consultations, check the release package and watch every deadline. Your officers review and decide — nothing is redacted, sent or closed without them. Every function of the legacy Axcess-1 is included, in a modern web application.

AI does the work. The ATIP professional makes the decision.

Canadian-developed. Department-controlled. AI-independent. — The Canadian alternative to US-owned ATIP platforms.

9
AI agents
30+
Reports
154
Statutory clauses
EN / FR
Bilingual

Why Axcess1

Agentic AI, officer-controlled

Nine AI agents prepare the work: they triage new requests, analyze and classify records, judge responsiveness, propose exemptions with the clause, suggest consultations, run a quality check and watch deadlines. Every output is a proposal with its reasons and sources; the officer accepts, edits or rejects it. No agent can release, redact, send or close anything.

Classic or Agentic — your choice

The same system runs as Classic Axcess1 (no AI at all) or as Agentic-AI Axcess1. An administrator switches each capability on or off under Admin → AI, per organization. With AI off, nothing is sent to any model and the AI screens do not exist.

TBS-ready reporting

Part 1 through Part 7 of the ATI Annual Report + Privacy equivalents, in the exact federal submission format. With a validation pass that re-derives every total from the source tables before submission.

Bilingual end-to-end

Every screen, every letter, every report in English and French. Language-preference per requester, per template.

Pluggable infrastructure

Storage, OCR, AI, email, authentication — every boundary is an adapter configured in the admin. Runs on AWS, Azure, GC Cloud, or fully on-premise.

Every legacy Axcess-1 function

Release 2.7.0 carries every function of the previous Axcess-1 — WebForms screens, SSRS reports and the C++ Editor — into one modern web application. It imports the legacy database, the Scan / Markup / ReleasePDF folders, .rects / .erma / .axc files and Word templates, and can still write .rects files for the old Editor.

Auditable & compliant

Audit log of every change, full chain of custody for every AI recommendation (agent, prompt version, model, input, decision), encrypted secrets, signed approvals and OIC investigation-ready exports.

TBS compliance & reporting

Axcess1 follows the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat policy suite for ATIP, and produces the annual statistical reports TBS requires — every part, in English and French, from live data.

Statistical Report on the Access to Information Act

  • Part 1 — Requests under the Access to Information Act
  • Part 2 — Requests closed during the reporting period
  • Part 3 — Extensions
  • Part 4 — Fees
  • Part 5 — Consultations received from other institutions and organizations
  • Part 6 — Completion time of consultations on Cabinet confidences
  • Part 7 — Complaints and investigations
  • Part 8 — Court action
  • Part 9 — Resources related to the Access to Information Act

Statistical Report on the Privacy Act

  • Part 1 — Requests under the Privacy Act
  • Part 2 — Requests closed during the reporting period
  • Part 3 — Disclosures under subsections 8(2) and 8(5)
  • Part 4 — Requests for correction of personal information and notations
  • Part 5 — Extensions
  • Part 6 — Consultations received from other institutions and organizations
  • Part 7 — Completion time of consultations on Cabinet confidences
  • Part 8 — Complaints, investigations and court action
  • Part 10 — Resources related to the Privacy Act

Validated before you file

A validation report lists the requests, fees, events and costs behind every figure, compares the totals with the published report and flags any mismatch — errors are caught before submission, not after.

Exactly the TBS tables

Disposition by completion time, exemptions and exclusions by section, format, pages processed and disclosed, complexity, late reasons and days past deadline, extensions by length, fees, consultations, Cabinet confidences, complaints and court action, resources.

Pick, print, submit

Section picker to produce only some parts; PDF in a modern layout or the legacy SSRS layout; English and French; fiscal-year picker.

The law, built into the workflow

  • 30-day statutory time limit computed from the date the request is complete, in calendar days (or working days if the institution chooses).
  • Holds stop the clock and completing them restarts it; the due date moves automatically.
  • Extensions under ATIA s.9(1)(a), (b), (c) and Privacy Act s.15(a)(i), (ii), (b), with the legal limits checked.
  • Full clause catalogue: ATIA exemptions ss.13–26 and exclusions ss.68–69.1, Privacy Act ss.18–28 and s.70; mandatory and discretionary flags.
  • Consultations with other institutions and third parties (ATIA s.27), with pages, due-back dates and returns.
  • Cabinet confidences tracked through the PCO consultation, counted in the TBS report.
  • Complaints to the Information Commissioner and the Privacy Commissioner, Privacy Act corrections and notations, Federal Court applications.
  • Late reasons, days late, fees and waivers recorded as TBS reports them; proactive disclosure of completed requests.

Operational and management reports

Snapshot · Weekly · Weekly for DG · DM Update · Compliance · Performance · Time Analysis · Workload (officer and manager views) · Employee and Manager Performance · ATIP Stages · Request Dashboard · Event Breakdown · Consultation · Outstanding · Cash Management · Cost Management · Search & Preparation Fees · Salary & O&M Expenses · Quality of Sector Response · Complaints · Courts · Proactive Disclosure · Outreach Policy · Requests closed in error · Pages by type · Documents by officer · Activity · Organization view · ad hoc report builder. Every report offers the legacy filters — date basis, officer, approver, as-of day, working or calendar days — with a details list behind each figure and CSV export.

The Canadian alternative to US-owned ATIP software

Many federal institutions process their most sensitive information — personal information, Cabinet confidences, advice to ministers, third-party business information — on ATIP platforms owned by companies in the United States.

Ownership brings jurisdiction. Software and services controlled by a US company can be subject to US law, including the CLOUD Act, which allows US authorities to compel US companies to produce data under their control wherever it is stored. Product direction, pricing and support are decided outside Canada. Canadian institutions no longer have to depend on foreign-owned software for a core function of government accountability.

Axcess1 is developed and supported in Canada and runs where your department decides.

Digital sovereignty, in every layer

Data sovereignty

Records, documents, redactions and the database stay where your department puts them: your data centre, your approved cloud or Canadian-hosted infrastructure. Protected information stays in Canada.

Legal sovereignty

Owned and supported by a Canadian company under Canadian law — not subject to the US CLOUD Act or other foreign laws that can compel a foreign-owned supplier to hand over data.

AI sovereignty

AI can run entirely on your own servers with SoftSim Private AI. Your department decides whether AI is used, which services are allowed and what each may see.

Operational sovereignty

Your department controls the installation, network access, identity, encryption keys and upgrades. The system runs with no connection to the supplier.

Supply-chain sovereignty

Product direction, pricing, support and security fixes are decided in Canada — not by a foreign parent company's priorities, acquisitions or end-of-life decisions.

Data portability

Your ATIP history is yours, in a standard, readable SQL Server or PostgreSQL database you can always access, export or move.

Economic sovereignty

Public funds build Canadian expertise, jobs and intellectual property instead of paying licence fees to foreign suppliers.

Linguistic and legal fit

Built for the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act, TBS reporting and both official languages from the start.

Leaving a US-owned platform is easier than it looks

SoftSim migrates your case history, requesters, events and documents from US-owned platforms and other ATIP systems into Axcess1 as part of the implementation — and legacy Axcess-1 data is migrated with built-in tools. Axcess1 is offered at a fraction of the cost of traditional enterprise ATIP software.

Canadian-developed. Department-controlled. AI-independent.

The six-step workflow

Intake → Tasking & retrieval → Review & redaction → Consultation & approval → Release → Report — with an AI agent at each step.

  1. 1

    Intake

    Entered by hand, from an e-mail or the shared mailbox, or imported from a portal (CSV / JSON). The request gets its number from the type's template (e.g. A-2026-01), the officer and a statutory due date; planned events for the type are created. Agent: the Intake agent reads the message and proposes the type, requester, scope and clarification questions.

  2. 2

    Tasking & retrieval

    E-mail the OPI from the request, track sector responses and response quality, holds and extensions (9(1)(a)/(b)/(c), 15(a)) that move the due date automatically. Records are uploaded as PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images or scans, registered with date and title, and OCR'd. Agents: Document Intelligence summarizes and classifies each record and finds exact duplicates; Responsiveness judges each record against the request.

  3. 3

    Review & redaction

    Page-accurate editor with the ATIA / Privacy Act clause picker, most-used and recent clauses, colours, highlights, withheld pages and page ranges with a reason, consultation marks. Agents: Exemption Assist proposes each exemption with the provision and the exact text; Consultation proposes who to consult; the QA second pass flags anything missed.

  4. 4

    Consultation & approval

    One consultation package per party, OPI review copy, coordinator review of every change, electronic approval and signature of letters and packages.

  5. 5

    Release

    Release package with page numbering, watermark, cover page, severance or highlight style, redaction summary and a bilingual letter, sent by e-mail or Canada Post Connect. Closing sets the disposition date.

  6. 6

    Report & respond

    Every action feeds the dashboard, 30+ operational reports and the TBS annual reports. OIC / OPC complaints, corrections and Federal Court cases are tracked against the original request. Agent: Deadline watch ranks every open request by risk.

Agentic AI — the AI agents

Each agent prepares part of the work and hands the officer a proposal with its reasons and sources. Information agents only inform; proposal agents wait for the officer's decision. Releasing, redacting, sending letters, changing a status or changing users are never automated — no agent has those capabilities.

Intake

Proposal

Reads a pasted message or the shared mailbox and proposes the request type, requester (matched to Contacts), scope, dates and clarification questions. Confirm creates the request.

Document Intelligence

Information

Summarizes each record, identifies its type, language, people, organizations and topics, and flags exact duplicates.

Responsiveness

Proposal

Compares each record with the request: responsive, partly, not responsive or uncertain — with the reasons and the pages.

Exemption Assist

Proposal

Finds candidate exemptions page by page with the verbatim text, the provision (e.g. 19(1), 20(1)(b)), the category and the reason — personal information first. Each candidate links to the exact page in the Editor.

Consultation

Proposal

Proposes which institutions and third parties to consult, why, on which pages, skipping parties already consulted.

QA second pass

Information

Deterministic checks before release: accepted candidate with no redaction, redaction without a clause, unreturned consultation, inconsistent duplicates, unfinished records — ranked high / medium / low.

Deadline watch

Information

Ranks open requests as overdue, critical or at risk from the statutory clock, consultations and review progress.

Ask Axcess1

Information

Answers questions about a request only from its records and the knowledge base, with a citation for every statement.

Orchestrator

Workflow

Runs the whole chain on a request in one click — analysis, responsiveness, exemptions, consultations, QA — and stops with every proposal waiting for the officer.

How an agentic workflow runs on a request

  1. STEP 1
    Analyze

    Document Intelligence reads every record: summary, type, language, entities, duplicates.

  2. STEP 2
    Responsiveness

    Each record is checked against the wording of the request.

  3. STEP 3
    Exemptions

    Candidates with the exact text and the provision, personal information first.

  4. STEP 4
    Consultations

    Institutions and third parties to consult, with pages and reasons.

  5. STEP 5
    Quality check

    Rules-based second pass before release; the workflow stops, waiting for the officer.

Safeguards built in

  • Human in the loop: no administrative decision is automated — the officer accepts, edits or rejects every proposal.
  • Designed with the Government of Canada Directive on Automated Decision-Making and the Guide on the use of generative AI in mind.
  • Every proposal cites its source: the page and the exact text, or the passage of the Act or of your guidance.
  • Policy gateway per organization: which data may go to which provider, by security classification and personal information.
  • Private AI option: the model runs on your own servers — no page ever leaves your network.
  • AI state kept apart from the ATIP records; turning AI off leaves the legacy data untouched.
  • Bilingual AI screens and outputs; French requests handled like English ones.
  • Tested end to end with AI on and with AI off before every release.

Chain of custody

Every recommendation records who asked, which agent and prompt version, which model, on what input, and what the officer decided. Nothing is deleted.

Your data, your policy

A policy gateway refuses external AI providers for Protected B or personal information unless the institution allows it. SoftSim Private AI keeps every page on your own servers.

Switch on when ready

Start in Classic mode and turn agents on one by one under Admin → AI. The knowledge base holds the Acts and your own guidance, separated by department.

Everything an ATIP office needs

The complete functionality of release 2.7.0 — including every function of the legacy Axcess-1.

Requests & intake

  • ATI, Privacy, consultation, informal and internal request types, each with its own number template, time frame and clause set
  • Requester search, new requester inline, institution code and separate mailing address
  • Filters remembered per user: officer, My requests, type, requester, file number, agency, source, date range on received / info complete / due / closed
  • Quick views: received this week, unassigned, open complaints, reopened; every column sortable
  • Rules from the Act: date info complete locked on hold, manual due date for types without a time frame, clause set locked once redactions exist

Events, holds & deadlines

  • Event form driven by the event type: extensions with default and maximum days, s.9 and s.15 caps checked
  • Holds stop the clock; completing them moves the due date automatically
  • Planned-event templates per request type, promoted to events when due
  • Sector / OPI tasking with target dates, days late and response quality; notes to file; hidden events
  • Reassign and Info-complete events written automatically; disposition date set on closing

Documents

  • Upload PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, images and TIFF; conversion to pages and OCR
  • Registration: type, class, from / to, language, translation, search words, notes; registration summary
  • Duplicate detection, bulk select (open together, mark finished, delete), sort on any column
  • Page counters (reviewed, released, withheld) computed automatically
  • Attachment files on every request: upload, open, download

Redaction editor

  • Redact, highlight and withhold pages or page ranges with a clause or reason (Duplicate, Not relevant, Blank)
  • Most-used and your recent clauses on top, Same as last, Justify all unsubstantiated boxes at once
  • Colours remembered per user, see-through withheld pages for review, zoom 25–400 %, first / last page, Print, Ctrl+O document picker
  • Undo / redo, autosave, keyboard operation, read-only when redaction is finished
  • Deleted rectangles shown and reactivated with a reason; legacy .rects files imported and written

Audio & video redaction

  • Video (MP4, MOV, WebM…) and sound (MP3, WAV, M4A…) up to 2 GB, uploaded in pieces
  • One redaction covers a time range: blur or black box on the picture, mute or bleep on the sound, each with its clause
  • Faces, licence plates, screens and text found on the server that runs Axcess1 (yours, or ours in Canada), followed as they move; the analyst accepts or rejects each find
  • Speech turned into text on the server that runs Axcess1 (yours, or ours in Canada); the AI proposes the passages to mute, the analyst decides
  • Redacted copy in MP4 or MP3, location, author and device details removed, the original never changed
  • Every copy checked against the original before release; a copy that fails is not released

Consultations

  • Mark whole documents or specific pages for each party, pages add up across reviews
  • One consultation package per party; Export PDF of the pages marked for a party
  • Due-back dates, returns and the consultation chip on each page

PDF packages & release

  • OPI review copy and release copy in one click, compression under the 15 MB e-mail limit
  • Severances, highlights or both; page numbers with prefix, continue / restart; cover page; Bates labels
  • Watermark per package (text, position, size, angle, colour); sort by date or index; earlier versions kept
  • Warning when unfinished documents are included; Start-new-PDF parts for large releases

Correspondence & e-mail

  • Bilingual letter templates with the full legacy merge-field set; legacy Word (.dot / .doc) templates imported
  • Templates by topic and by request status; edit the letter in Word and upload the new version
  • E-mail the requester or task the OPI from the request; e-mail groups; replies ingested from the mailbox
  • Coordinator notified, approves and signs letters and packages in the system

Fees, costs & cases

  • Fee and cost types from the rate tables, increase / decrease, currency, running balance, waivers
  • Cost centre and finance category; request cost total kept up to date
  • OIC / OPC complaints, Privacy Act corrections and Federal Court cases with officer, notes and dates

Reports

  • TBS Annual Statistical Reports (ATI and Privacy): every part, section picker, validation lists behind each figure, PDF in two layouts, EN / FR
  • Snapshot, Weekly, Weekly for DG, DM Update, Compliance, Performance, Time Analysis, Workload, Stages, Dashboard, Event Breakdown
  • Consultation, Outstanding, Cash Management, Cost Management, Search & Prep Fees, Salary & O&M, Complaints, Courts, Proactive Disclosure, Outreach Policy, Closed in error
  • Legacy filters on every report: date basis, officer, approver, as-of day, working or calendar days; details lists; CSV export; ad hoc report builder

Administration

  • Users with the legacy profile fields, roles, approvers, organization levels; organization switcher for platform administrators
  • Request types, lookup tables with all extra fields, events per status, planned-event templates, holidays
  • Idle sign-out, per-user trace, data browser (read-only), purge by disposition date (archived, reversible)
  • Incidents console with Send to SoftSim, diagnostics, migration health and request folder repair
  • Pluggable providers: storage, OCR, e-mail, authentication (SSO) and AI — chosen in the admin console, not in code

Deployment, migration & upgrades

Where it runs

On-premise (Docker, Linux or Windows server), in GC Cloud or a Canadian cloud region, or as a hosted service for several departments with each department's data kept apart.

Your database

Microsoft SQL Server — including your existing Axcess-1 database — or PostgreSQL. The legacy tables are kept as they are; nothing is removed.

Guided installation

A setup wizard configures the database, storage, licence, organization and first administrator; a system check verifies every component.

Migration from Axcess-1

Restore the legacy backup, import the Scan / Markup / ReleasePDF folders, the .rects / .erma / .axc Editor files and the Word templates. Migration Health finds and fixes what needs attention.

Safe upgrades

One command upgrades the application with about a minute of downtime; the previous version is kept for a one-line rollback. Every release is rehearsed on a copy of a customer installation.

Tested end to end

Each release passes the full live test suite — the whole life of a request, the reports, AI on and AI off — before it is delivered.

What Axcess1 does

Every capability below ships in the application today. Ask for a live demonstration to see it.

01

Dashboard

One view of every metric that matters — active requests, overdue count, due this week, closed this month, average days to close, and top statutory exemptions.

02

Requests queue

Every ATI, Privacy and Correction request in one filterable list. Officer, due dates, pages used / left, status — all inline.

03

TBS ATI Validation

Cross-checks every published total against the underlying Request tables before TBS submission — mismatches flagged in red, not caught after filing.

04

Request detail

Status timeline, requester, officer, pages, documents, correspondence, releases, consults, complaints, courts, notes — every artifact on one page.

05

Documents workspace

Upload, OCR, scan, mark up, redact, and release — per-document status, page counts, classification, and release-ready flags.

06

Audio and video redaction

Blur or black out the picture and mute or bleep the sound, each redaction with its clause. Faces, licence plates, screens and text are found on your own server and proposed to the analyst, who decides. Every redacted copy is checked against the original before release.

07

Redaction editor

Pixel-accurate markup with the full ATIA and Privacy Act clause picker. Select, highlight, withhold-page, encrypt/restore, undo/redo, multi-doc navigation.

08

AI-assisted redaction

Analyze documents with configurable AI providers — get clause-tagged suggestions for s.19 personal info, s.21 advice, s.23 privilege, and more. Officer approves every rect.

09

Export PDF

Watermark, clause IDs, Bates numbers, page-number location, rectangle style — all configurable per release.

10

Release workflow

Audience-aware (requester vs. consultee), picks PDF groups + cover letter + attachments, sends email, records release date, bumps Review → Release — one auditable transaction.

11

Correspondence

Acknowledgement, extension, fee, transfer, final letters — template-driven, bilingual, auto-merged with request data, delivered via the configured email provider.

12

Third-party consultations

Section 27 callouts with agency, contact, sent-out / due-back / return dates and page ranges — tracked end-to-end.

13

Events timeline

Every status change, consultation, correspondence, and officer action recorded on an immutable audit trail.

14

Fees & cost management

Fee calculation, waiver tracking, invoices, and per-request cost roll-ups feeding TBS Part 1.5 reports.

15

Planned events

Forward-looking calendar: extensions, consultations, approvals, fee deadlines — flagged before they miss.

16

Complaints

OIC and OPC complaints tracked against requests — intake date, investigator, disposition, findings.

17

Courts

Federal Court references and judicial reviews linked to the originating request and release decision.

18

Corrections

Privacy Act section 12 correction notations tracked against original requests.

19

Notes

Officer-only working notes, timestamped, never released.

20

Attachments

Supporting files attached to any request — cover letters, waivers, transfer notices, exhibits.

21

Activity report

Per-request audit digest: who did what, when — exportable to PDF for file-keeping.

22

Full-text search

Cross-cutting search across requests, documents, and correspondence — locale-aware, case-insensitive, ranks by relevance.

23

Reports hub

TBS ATI, TBS Privacy, Workload, By Status, Organization, Outstanding, Activity, Performance, Docs by Officer, Pages by Type, Cash/Cost, Complaints, Compliance.

24

TBS Annual Report — ATI

Part 1 through Part 7 tables generated from live data in the exact SSRS layout accepted by TBS.

25

TBS Privacy

Privacy Act annual report in the same federal-submission format, bilingual, signed off by the ATIP coordinator.

26

Contacts directory

Requesters, media, agencies, consultees, and courts in one searchable book — with language preference and correspondence history.

27

Workload

Per-officer open request counts, overdue breakdown, and throughput trend lines.

28

Performance

Time-to-close distribution, completion rates by officer and by request type, seasonal throughput curves.

29

Organization view

Institution-wide rollups for deputy-minister briefings: volumes, aging, released pages, top exemptions.

30

Pages by type

Released / withheld / excluded / transferred page counts segmented by request type — feeds TBS Part 2 exactly.

31

Cash management

Fees collected, waived, refunded — per-quarter roll-ups and outstanding fee tracking.

32

Admin console

Every operational knob in one place: users, roles, organizations, request types, lookup tables, event setup, templates, retention, scheduler.

33

Integrations

Provider-agnostic external intake — CSV, JSON, email, SFTP, future API — with field mapping, status mapping, preview, sync history.

34

Email (send & receive)

Outbound SES / SMTP plus inbound IMAP: subject-matched ingestion turns reply emails into RequestAttachment + CORRESP events automatically.

35

AI adapter

Choose the AI provider in the admin console, not in code: SoftSim Private AI on your own servers, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, Anthropic — or no AI at all (Classic mode).

36

OCR adapter

Tesseract on your own server or AWS Textract — configured through the admin console, not code.

37

Storage adapter

Local disk, database, S3, Azure Blob, SharePoint, OneDrive or GCdocs — the document store is a runtime choice.

38

Users & roles

Officer, approver and administrator roles, organization levels and approvers. Sign-in with Axcess1 accounts or your LDAP / Active Directory.

39

Audit log

Every write in the system — who, what, when, before/after. Retention-controlled, read-only, exportable for OIC investigations.

Security & compliance

ATIA & Privacy Act

Full clause catalog (ss.13–26 ATIA, ss.18–28 PA, exclusions s.68–69.1), language-neutral severance, mandatory vs. discretionary flagging.

Protected B ready

Hardened authentication, role-based access, encrypted secrets, audit trails, CSP / HSTS headers, idle sign-out. Runs on-premise, in GC Cloud or in a Canadian cloud region. 100% Canadian-developed.

Accessibility

WCAG 2.1 AA: keyboard-only operation, screen-reader landmarks, skip-link, focus-visible rings, tabular numerals for KPIs.

OIC-ready

Immutable audit log, activity reports exportable to PDF, complaint intake, disposition tracking, Federal Court references linked to the originating request.

Bilingual

Every UI string, every letter template, every report in EN and FR. Language-preference per requester / per template. Official Languages Act by design.

Retention

Disposition date set from the request type when a request is closed; purge by disposition date moves the files to an archive, is audited and can be reversed by an administrator.

Support & training

Guides included

User's Guide (request lifecycle A to Z, and where every Axcess-1 function is now), Administrator's Guide, Installation Guide, AI Guide and an upgrade guide with each release.

Training

Sessions for ATIP officers (requests, records, redaction, release) and for administrators (users, lookups, templates, reports, AI), in English or French.

Incidents to SoftSim

Every error is recorded with its likely cause; one click sends the report to SoftSim support, or downloads it for sites without outgoing mail.

See Axcess1 in your institution

Request a live demo or pilot deployment. We'll run your existing ATIP volumes through Classic and Agentic-AI Axcess1 and show the TBS report round-trip end-to-end.

Request a demoFull feature catalog

SoftSim Technologies Inc · axcess1.ca · info@softsim.ca · Montréal, Québec, Canada