Fed gov pays to access at least six AI suites

Federal government entities are embracing AI tools in a big way, with 30,000 paid subscriptions to M365 Copilot that are known, and other tools and models starting to see pockets of trial and usage.

The first real ‘census’ of AI subscription services in use across the federal government is made possible by a form question posed by Senator Jane Hume to departments, agencies and entities after the most recent round of senate estimates.

So far, 67 entities have responded - and while this is a fraction of the 1386 that exist, it does include some of the largest departments and agencies.

Importantly, this usage data is often not in the AI transparency statements that entities must now publish, increasing visibility of which vendor ecosystems and tools are making headway in the federal market.

Microsoft’s M365 Copilot arguably had a headstart - handed a six-month government-wide trial not afforded to other vendors - even though the lack of government data stored in Microsoft applications curtailed the tool’s utility and the trial results.

The best part of a year-and-a-half has elapsed since then, and AI capabilities then and now can’t really be compared.

It’s clear that despite early hiccups, many federal entities persisted with Copilot.

The numbers show that the government has taken up around 29,000 paid licences for Copilot across the 67 entities that responded to Senator Hume’s question.

iTnews has excluded, as near as possible, entities that reported Copilot access as “Copilot Chat”, rather than Copilot as a specific paid subscription.

Among the largest Copilot subscribers are the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (over 7000 licences) and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (over 5000 licences).

While Copilot for M365 is the dominant flavour of Copilot finding government use, there are others also in play.

The Australian Digital Health Agency, for example, reported 40 licences of Copilot Studio, which is used to build AI agents.

Various entities - including the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR), National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and the Federal and Family Courts - said they had a combined 164 paid licences for GitHub Copilot, which is a AI coding assistant.

Gemini adoption

The Attorney-General’s Department revealed itself in July to be a large backer of Google NotebookLM, which has since been rebranded as ‘Gemini Notebook’.

The figures show that the department has 652 paid licences of Gemini Notebook, making it the largest known federal entity to back Google AI technology.

But it is not alone.

While licence numbers are not disclosed, Snowy Hydro states that “all [of its] staff have access to Google Gemini Workspace”, likely meaning it uses Google’s productivity suite, which comes with some Gemini-based integrations.

The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) reports having eight licences of Gemini, describing the purchase as a “low-value monthly subscription” for the purpose of a “limited trial”.

Perhaps more interestingly, the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) reports having two licences for the high-tier AI subscription plan called “Google AI Ultra”.

This is again, though, for the purposes of a trial.

“The PBO has purchased a small number of licences for AI services for experimentation off the PBO network and on devices without any access to PBO data or systems,” it said, naming Google AI Ultra as one of those.

Claude access

Anthropic is known to have a handful of reportable deals with the likes of the Fair Work Commission, IP Australia and the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD).

However, some other federal users are now also known; their licence costs are presumably considerably lower than the $10,000 threshold for reporting contracts.

The DTA has nine users of Claude in the same pilot that is also evaluating Gemini.

The Parliamentary Budget Office also has five Claude licences - again used without access to its data or systems, while the Australian Fisheries Management Authority has five licences of its own.

Other AI tools that show up

A small handful of other AI tools are in isolated use by federal entities.

The Federal Court of Australia, Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and the National Native Title Tribunal are the only entities to reveal paid licences - six - for Figma Make, which could be loosely categorised as a “vibe coding” tool.

The Department of Social Services declared 10 paid licences for Otter.ai, a transcription tool favoured by journalists and others.

Meanwhile, NDIA said it is paying to use Amazon Bedrock, which is used to build and scale generative and agentic AI applications. It’s likely there are other federal users of Bedrock, but most entities took the senate questions to mean AI subscriptions for general employee use.

To be expected, there is also a not insignificant number of agencies that confirm having some form of AI subscription service, without actually naming it.

At least 2000 licences fall into this category, although - in keeping with the general trend - they are most likely to be Copilot in some form.

The answers to this may come from a new, wide-ranging federal AI inquiry which, among other topics, is set to canvas "the adoption of AI by Commonwealth departments and agencies to improve services for Australians, and the transparency and accountability measures that apply to AI use".

It is expected to report by November 30.