Gov reveals AI plan as Home Affairs pursues industry briefings

The federal government has designs on more flavours of generative AI for use in agencies as part of a whole-of government plan timed to match industry briefings held by Home Affairs this week.

Minister for Finance Senator Katy Gallagher said that the government would provide public servants with guidance on how to use ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini with information up to the official level.

Home Affairs has already conducted needed security assessments to deem Anthropic and OpenAI’s products, applications and web services as suitable for use with official level government information.

The government announced its plan at the launch of the latest Australian Public Service annual progress report.

Its timing also aligns with a town hall meeting that, iTnews understands, Home Affairs will host for AI technology suppliers this week.

It’s understood that Home Affairs has invited more than a dozen of its certified generative AI suppliers, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Macquarie Telecom, Deloitte, Oracle and Vault Cloud.

Under Home Affairs’ current Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) directions, the department’s certified providers have already passed high level foreign ownership check and excused from additional assessments.

Home Affairs only gave OpenAI and Anthropic products the green light to be sold into non-corporate government departments for use with official government information when it released its policy advisory for generative AI early this month.

Gallagher said that the government was planning for “every public servant to have access to secure generative AI directly from their laptop”. And, she said the government hoped to develop its own “Gov AI Chat” as part of an extension to its Gov AI platform.

Every agency will have to appoint a senior executive level chief AI officer by July next year and the government will establish a new committee to “review all high-risk use cases across the APS”.

"We will establish an AI review committee to enhance whole-of-government oversight and ensure consistent and responsible deployment of AI across the APS," Gallagher said.

She said that the government’s use of AI was not aimed at shrinking the public service.

“AI adoption across the APS is not about replacing people. It’s about unlocking new capabilities while ensuring our people are focused on the work that requires human insight, empathy, and judgement."