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AI in government policy and guidance updates
Providing clarity, enhance accountability and risk management
Lead agency: DTA
The government will update the Policy for responsible use of AI in government (the AI in government policy) to strengthen public trust in government by providing clarity, enhancing accountability, and ensuring effective risk identification and management in the use of AI. The AI in government policy took effect on 1 September 2024. It laid the foundation by introducing accountability measures, transparency requirements, and guidance for foundational training. As AI adoption across the APS accelerates and the technology landscape evolves, the DTA is updating this policy to include a broader set of AI governance practices that will support agencies to confidently adopt AI while building public trust.
The new requirements include requiring agencies to develop a strategic position on AI adoption and to communicate this position to staff. This will support agencies to better engage with and realise the benefits of AI. Accountability requirements will be strengthened so that each in-scope use case has a clearly assigned accountable officer and is recorded in an internal register. This strengthens and builds on the important role of the AI Accountable Official, a role mandated under the existing policy to ensure the requirements of the policy are met.
The update also builds trust in government use of AI through mandating the AI impact assessment tool for in-scope use cases, which targets governance and risk management actions towards higher-risk use cases.
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Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver for Australians
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People: Capability building and engagement
Public servants must be equipped with the right skills to use AI responsibly and effectively. This requires support at a whole-of-APS level, within and between organisations, and for individuals.
The initiatives under this pillar target sector-wide capability building, to support all APS staff to use this technology effectively, safely and appropriately – including building on the cybersecurity uplift of agencies’ IT systems.
Building trust will require clear and transparent engagement with staff and unions. Ongoing and genuine consultation grounded in existing obligations and mechanisms, such as APS Enterprise Agreements and the APS Consultative Committee, will be part of the rollout of AI technologies, ensuring transparency and fostering a sense of ownership and support for change among employees.
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Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver for Australians
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Tools: Access, infrastructure and support
APS officials need to be empowered with the right AI tools to do their jobs safely and effectively. This means providing access to public web-based AI for low-risk activities, and to secure AI tools for more sensitive activities.
The initiatives under this pillar ensure that all public servants can access the tools they need through a three-tier approach:
- Universal availability of generative AI through GovAI and GovAI Chat, providing a safe and secure baseline chat interface to all APS officers.
- Public and enterprise AI services, enabling the use of public AI tools for public and OFFICIAL level information where it meets agency needs.
- Custom AI solutions, tailored for specific workflows or specialised use cases.
The Tools pillar provides the technical foundation for APS AI adoption, enabling agency innovation and empowering individual staff, while meeting people’s expectations within trusted governance settings. This plan notes that many specialised AI uses are usually best developed at an agency-level and does not intend to impede such adoption.
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Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver for Australians
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Foreword
Australians deserve to benefit from the possibilities that new technologies bring. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) provides us with the means to improve public services, make it easier for people and businesses to interact with government, and to help manage employee workloads.
This plan ensures that every public servant will have training and access to generative AI tools. The plan sets a proactive stance to increase AI adoption. It ensures the Australian Government keeps pace with community expectations as well as international peers.
Keeping trust with the Australian people will be critical to successful adoption of this new technology. The plan affirms the clear policies and guidance that exist for public servants, ensuring that AI will be used safely and responsibly, and is accompanied by a public Statement of Intent setting out how the Albanese Government expects AI to be used – and not used – by the public service.
This plan sets out our commitment to engage openly and constructively to ensure the introduction of AI across the APS is transparent, inclusive, and well-managed. This will be backed by comprehensive workforce planning, identification of how jobs may change, the new skills and training required, and managing change with our employees and their unions.
By strengthening existing consultation frameworks, we will provide meaningful avenues for input so staff are engaged and supported through ongoing change as we together build a more capable and future-ready public service.
This plan lays the foundations for seizing new opportunities while ensuring flexibility to adapt as AI evolves. Together, we can build a modern, responsive public service that captures the opportunity of AI, spreads the benefits widely and keeps Australians safe.
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Communicate service upgrades
Communicate the change: Develop a communication plan for how, when and through which channels to share updates and findings with your users. When writing your content, show how your users’ feedback informed the actions you have taken. Highlight key achievements or milestones reached and use real-life stories to demonstrate how users shaped change.
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Almost all the muscles, and bones, of which the human form is composed, have more, or less of these kind of twists in them; and give in a less degree, the same kind of appearance to the parts which cover them, and are the immediate object of the eye: and for this reason it is that I have been so particular in describing these forms of the bent, and twisted, and ornamental horn.
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Yet, properly speaking, no living creatures are capable of moving in such truly varied and graceful directions, as the human species; and it would be needless to say how much superior in beauty their forms and textures likewise are. And surely also after what has been said relating to figure and motion, it is plain and evident that nature has thought fit to make beauty of proportion, and beauty of movement, necessary to each other: so that the observation before made on animals, will hold equally good with regard to man: i. e. that he who is most exquisitely well-proportioned is most capable of exquisite movements, such as ease and grace in deportment, or in dancing.
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Document title
Confusingly similar titles of the National framework for the assurance of AI in government and this pilot Australian Government assurance framework, even though they are very different documents. The pilot framework could be considered an assessment form or tool, with fields for users to populate, rather than a traditional, static ‘framework’ document. It is intended to complement and inform existing governance and assurance processes, rather than provide a standalone, comprehensive ‘assurance’ mechanism.
Proposed response
Title will be updated to: Australian Government AI impact assessment tool.
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Assessment format
Some participants felt providing a digital tool for the assessment would be useful, if it helped streamline the process and make assessments more robust through features like business rules and branching questions. Several participants took the initiative to convert the document into a basic Microsoft Forms template for the pilot.
However, others preferred the existing Word document format, with a single document providing an overview of the full assessment process, where version history is preserved as the assessment is updated. They felt a document format is more familiar and user-friendly, and queried whether a digital tool would meet record keeping requirements.
Proposed response
Explore options for a digital tool that meets key requirements, including version history tracking, record keeping, accessibility, easy navigation.
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Connect with the digital community
Share, build or learn digital experience and skills with training and events, and collaborate with peers across government.