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4 days ago | 
ia.acs.org.au | Jeremy Nadel
A face-matching tool used by NSW Police and created by German firm Cognitec was switched off earlier this year when concerns with its 14-year-old algorithm peaked, but similar technology will return in a capability being procured to profile suspects using features like scars and tattoos.
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1 month ago | 
ia.acs.org.au | Jeremy Nadel
Lee Hickin will steer a $21.6 million federal government investment in Australia’s AI capability and advise on the implementation of hotly debated safeguards for emerging technology.
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1 month ago | 
ia.acs.org.au | Jeremy Nadel
Government agencies’ high-level descriptions of their artificial intelligence (AI) use cases in new mandatory registers have failed to quell developers, auditors and disability and privacy advocates’ concerns about the inability to assess their impacts.
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1 month ago | 
ia.acs.org.au | Jeremy Nadel
Services Australia has defended its trial of artificial intelligence (AI) models and provided further detail on their use in fraud detection and sorting through Centrelink’s “potential debts backlog”.
Late last Thursday, officials addressed questions about the models’ functions, training data, risks and safeguards after Senator Penny Allman-Payne tabled an Information Age report which was published just hours prior.
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1 month ago | 
ia.acs.org.au | Jeremy Nadel
EXCLUSIVE
The agency responsible for administering Centrelink has revealed few details about the artificial intelligence models it trialled late last year to predict fraudulent welfare claims and which debts to priortise recovering.
A Services Australia spokesperson told Information Age that systems were “being thoroughly tested” before “deployed into ongoing business processes", but welfare rights advocates have called for the release of audits of the systems’ accuracy and risk of bias.
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2 months ago | 
ia.acs.org.au | Jeremy Nadel
Plans to use automation and AI in NSW bail hearings have been paused after a prototype hit technical roadblocks and the state’s judicial watchdog decided it would not make judgments more accurate or restore the public’s confidence in them.
The Bail Assistant was intended to prompt the use of the correct bail criteria based on the facts of the case, like whether the defendant has previous convictions and to eventually predict the probable outcomes of granting the accused bail.
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2 months ago | 
thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Jeremy Nadel
An artificial intelligence tool adopted by New South Wales Police Force to help process large amounts of recorded material has drawn criticism from a state government-appointed review, which says its use could bias crime investigations and prevention efforts. Documents obtained by The Saturday Paper under freedom of information reveal misgivings about the potential impact of the Insights platform on historically over-policed demographics.
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
itnews.com.au | Jeremy Nadel
Over 600 taxpayers fell afoul of an automated system the ATO used to revive old debts and get them paid out of tax refunds, after software bugs caused miscalculations.
A cache of ATO correspondence, reports and minutes [pdf] iTnews obtained under freedom of information create a fuller picture of a disclosure to The Guardian earlier in February that “at least one system error” resulted in miscalculations of debt, affecting 49 taxpayers at the time.
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Jul 3, 2024 | 
itnews.com.au | Jeremy Nadel
Queensland public sector projects will soon be subject to internal assessments and external reviews designed for evaluating and mitigating risks specific to their use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM).
The state’s whole-of-government ICT oversight and enablement body told iTnews that it was on the verge of releasing the mandatory framework, which it first revealed it was drafting during a presentation in March.
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Jul 2, 2024 | 
itnews.com.au | Jeremy Nadel
National Archives of Australia is set to perform a "health check" on 15 service desks atop ServiceNow, its first such activity after six years of using the software.
The Commonwealth administrator of historical, government records will outsource the check-up on its ServiceNow tenancy and configuration. It also hopes to learn whether its setup is optimal or can be improved, such as through tighter integration with core systems.
