Australian tax agency to implement audit report’s recommendations on AI governance
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has agreed to join up its automation and AI strategies, clarify communication around accountability, and review risk controls, following an audit on AI governance at the organisation.
The ATO agreed “in full” to all seven recommendations in the report by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), which comes as the tax office plans to expand its use of AI.
The ANAO also recommended that the tax office align its AI design, development and deployment with its ethical principles; create more AI-specific policies and guidance to support the design pipeline; evaluate the performance of its current strategies; and monitor transparency with respect to information used while adopting AI.
The ATO said working on these areas supported its commitment to manage taxpayer data “with integrity” and to ensure “ethical decision making in everything we do”.
While it acknowledged that best practice for AI was still evolving, it said it would “continue to not only strive to achieve leading practice, but also assist the broader Australian Public Service”.
“We are expanding our policies and guidance to reference AI more explicitly, noting our existing data and analytics (including data governance and ethics) and IT policies already broadly apply to our use of AI,” it added.
Read more: Aiming high with AI: making artificial intelligence ubiquitous across government
AI in the auditing process
Dr Caralee McLiesh, Australia’s auditor-general, said that ANAO had identified “providing assurance on the governance of the use of [AI]” as a means of “bringing transparency and accountability to the parliament in this area of emerging public administration”.
She said the ATO had been the first agency to undergo an AI governance audit because it uses technology “extensively” in its administration of tax and superannuation systems, and added that the ANAO intended to use AI to improve its own auditing processes.
“The ANAO will seek to examine how AI can improve the audit process itself, in a profession where human judgement and scepticism are foundations in auditing standards… This work will progress through our relationships within the international public sector audit community over coming years.”
Read more: New guidance issued to help UK government departments evaluate AI’s impact
The fire of the starting gun
Australia is just one of many governments around the world working to embed AI in their operations and service delivery.
Last year, more than 60 Australian government agencies took part in a six-month trial of Microsoft 365 Copilot, a generative AI chatbot.
In the trial coordinated by Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency, public servants who used the tool as part of their jobs reported saving an average of an hour a day, with time for notetaking, minute-taking and other administrative duties noticeably reduced.
The country’s assistant minister for the public service, Patrick Gorman, urged public servants to use AI and stressed that Australia “could not afford to be left behind [on AI] when everyone else has heard the starting gun”. However, he warned that the technology should be treated “wisely”.
Wider regulation
Australia’s Productivity Commission had previously warned a senate select committee that competitive pressures surrounding AI could lead to change that altogether bypassed government intervention if governments did not respond “quickly and comprehensively”.
“Knee-jerk approaches to regulating AI threaten to stifle uptake and squander potential benefits,” the commission said. “While there are clearly risks from AI adoption, the government should take a considered approach to regulation that also keeps the benefits of AI in view.”
Read more: New Zealand government forges path to responsible AI with new framework
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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