Government agencies fail first hurdle under AI self-reporting policy

Ian Gillespie reporting there from Brisbane. Dozens of government bodies missed deadlines for reporting how they use artificial intelligence and nominate a single person to be in charge of its use. It was the first test of the government's plan to make agencies responsible for policing their own AI use. And while the departments have since corrected their mistakes, the lapses have prompted questions about Australia's broader approach to regulating AI. Is national AI technology reporter Cam Wilson. Last year Australia was at a crossroads. We were deciding which way we're going to go with AI regulation. One way was the EU style, where they have a central AI Act with rules in it that cover the technology's use across the whole country. The other pathway that we ended up going down was instead of doing that, we decided to give the responsibility of regulating AI use within various sectors to the government agencies that were responsible for regulating that sector overall. So instead of these one rules, you know, from the central organization, it was given to everyone to say you're the experts in your field, figure out how to use AI. Now that's obviously a different approach, and you know they bring that expertise, but there has been questions about well, you know, how are they going to understand this new technology? And so it was worth looking at how in the past they have regulated their own use of AI themselves to see just how good they are at that task. And so what did you or the ABC find about how agencies have handled this? Yeah, so around the same time, uh, the uh government agency that's responsible for administering technology across the government, which is the digital tech uh tech no digital transformation agency, um, they create a policy saying government agencies need to build up trust in themselves and how they're using this new technology. So they tasked all the agencies with disclosing how they use AI and also picking someone who's literally responsible for it, making sure that someone actually answers for it at the end of the day. And what we found was that uh dozens of these agencies out of about 90 odd uh had actually failed to do one or the other um by the first deadline that they've kind of set up in it. So this first task of saying, you know, not even like regulating outside of themselves, but literally how are you using it, they didn't meet it. Now that's not to say that they aren't using it in a safe way, but they weren't doing a great job at kind of meeting these basic expectations of explaining that, and so that makes it very hard from the outside to know how they're using it and to build that trust in their use of it. Are there possible concerning implications from this? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that you would just like assume is that you know, if you'll say we're we've got to go one way rather than the other, and you look at how they've kind of done that similar task in the past, um, it wasn't necessarily instilling a whole lot of confidence. That being said, they have you know um met those expectations, all of them now, so they have you know remedied that, and there are new expectations, broaden expectations to give us more detail about how they are using it within the agencies. So we'll see how they go on that. Some of those deadlines are still to come, but obviously, this is an area that's so important. It's this uh you know type of technology that is very hyped, Australians don't generally have a lot of trust in it, and it's changing so quickly, and it's very technical. So it's something that people are paying a lot of attention to. So I guess we'll see how they go on the next set of deadlines. And you'll be on it. I will be. Okay, we'll leave there, Ken Wilson. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Last year, Australian government agencies had an early stumble at self-policing their own use of artificial intelligence. They were supposed to disclose how they were using the technology and pick one person to be accountable for its use. But dozens of them failed to do so by their deadline, prompting questions about the government's broader plans to leave AI rulemaking up to each agency. Cam Wilson is the ABC’s national AI technology reporter and is with me in the studio now. Good to see you again, Cam. So, firstly, can you tell us about how the Australian government is approaching making rules around how to use AI? Yeah, sure. So last year the Australian government was at a fork in the road. Initially, it had decided to go with and was proposing to go with an EU style regulation that had a single AI Act and these broad rules in a law that would go across the whole country, everything. But after the 2025 federal election, instead they decided to change that and go with the style that left the regulation for AI up to each of the government agencies, tasking them with looking at their own sector and saying, here's how you should use the technology, including self-poicing They were supposed to put out uh AI transparency statements that said, here’s the technology we’re using, here’s what we’re using it to do, here’s how we’re making sure that it is done in a safe way. Um, and also some of them failed to nominate that one person who is supposed to be the person responsible for using the machine. You know, only necessarily that some of them didn't do these two tasks. That being said, without knowing how they’re using it, disclosing it, without knowing who’s responsible, it does make it very hard for us outside to you know feel comfortable and trust in the use of it within government. And what does this mean for their broader plans then? Well, I mean, when you think about it, you know, this decision to give all the agencies individually the task of dealing with this technology. They all have plenty on their plate at the moment, and AI, this new industry and new technology that is constantly changing, is extremely technical and complex. Um, you know, that one of the challenges was that by giving it to all the agencies individually, it meant that maybe it wouldn't be top of their to-do list. Um I should say that I think all the government agencies are now compliant with those basic rules, and the government has now added new rules, and so we’re actually getting more information and more disclosure. Thank you, Cam.

Ian Verender there. Well, last year Australia changed course on its approach to artificial intelligence. Instead of a EU style with a single AI Act and countrywide rules, the federal government chose to task its agencies with coming up with their own rules, including for how they would use the technology within the public sector. But when it came to their first test of self-policing, a majority of government agencies failed. With more, I'm joined by AI reporter Cam Wilson in Sydney. Hi there. Cam, can you just tell us a little bit about the government's early stumbles? Yeah, so one of the first things that government agencies had to do when they were considering talking about using their AI in government was disclose exactly how they were using it and how they were thinking about using it responsibly. This was a policy that was created by the government agency, the Digital Transformation Agency, which is tasked with making sure the government is using technology well and responsibly. It said you have six months, you all uh all these agencies, 94 of them, you've got to tell us how you're using it, how you're thinking about it. And they also was told you have to actually make one person ultimately responsible for it, an accountability officer. Um that six-month deadline came up, and what they found and what we're reporting is that the majority of agencies uh did not actually meet the deadline for those two pretty basic requirements. Um there's a variety of reasons. Some of them got in late, some of them didn't think that it applied to them. Uh honestly, sometimes there were a kind of utopia style areas where um one of the agencies was reportedly not compliant, but when the digital transformation agency looked into it, they realized that their spam filter had actually caught the notice of the fact that they had done this thing. So actually they had they were compliant, it just didn't make it to the right inbox. So yeah, you can see all the ways in which that they are had an early stumbles when it came to this. So then how are they doing now? They've improved since then. This kind of this deadline was uh early in 2025, and since then, all these agencies are now compliant. You know, they they got the the notice and they've fixed it up and they are now all sharing how they're using um AI and they have that officer. Now, when I spoke to an expert, they said the information in these um transparency notices varied. Some were better, some were worse. And this expert cautioned saying that, well, just because these agencies haven't necessarily done a good job of letting us know how they're using AI, doesn't mean they're not thinking about it responsibly, but of course, you know, letting people know about it, being transparent is important to have that awareness to be able to know and to to you know analyze if they are using it well. And so, you know, the expert that I spoke to said this um this still left a little bit wanting. So then what does this mean for Australia's broader approach when it comes to making rules for AI? Yeah, as you mentioned before, um, there was this fork in the road last year where the Australian government decided instead of having a kind of single AI act and maybe even having potentially an AI regulator and having these country to ride country ride wide rules for AI, they instead tasked all the agencies with policing their own sections of the of the country and and themselves. Um I think that this shows that there are challenges with adding another thing to the plates of all these government agencies. Um, the 94 of them have a lot to do. Uh, it gives them another responsibility, and also something that while they're probably the experts on their sector, aren't necessarily the experts on AI. Now, there is some assistance being given by the government with the AI Safety Institute and other things, but you know, there's a lot of things going on right now. AI is this new uh new kind of boom, so much is changing. Um, giving this task to all the agencies does have its potential um issues, and we saw this in this early test. Thank Cam Wilson, thank you very much. you.