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1 month ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon
Joshua Gliddon Mar 20, 2025 4 min read AI’s role in all levels of government isn’t about replacing humans but augmenting the innate creativity and problem-solving abilities people have with machine companions. AI eliminates the drudge work, the rote tasks and the low-level functions, allowing people to flourish and deliver real value to their organisations and the public they serve, says Mike Sicilia, executive vice president, Oracle Industries. “We hear a lot of the same things when we talk...
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1 month ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon
What will an AI-enabled department or agency look like? Most likely it won’t resemble anything like what exists today. The workplace will change, and the tasks staffers carry out will be different, and of higher value. But getting there means thinking today about how you’ll integrate AI tools into your data and workflow, what your objectives are, and whether those tools will help you deliver on your mission to improve Australians’ lives.
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1 month ago | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon
It’s still too early in the year for reliable figures, but it’s anticipated that about 6% of small-and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) failed last year. This is up from just over 4% the previous year. That’s according to predictions reported mid-year by the Australian Financial Review, which also recommended that SMBs adopt a hyper-vigilant stance around their cash flow — cash is the lifeblood of every business — to avoid becoming failure statistics.
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2 months ago | 
smartcompany.com.au | David Adams |Joshua Gliddon |Kristen Sobeck |Eloise Keating
Lawmakers will today consider Labor’s plan to remove tax deductibility from the interest charged on overdue tax debt, in a bill Coalition MPs and independent crossbenchers argue will penalise struggling businesses. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) applies the General Interest Charge (GIC) to amounts that go unpaid after their due date. It also levels the Shortfall Interest Charge (SIC) on self-assessed debts that fall below what a taxpayer actually owes.
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2 months ago | 
smartcompany.com.au | Joshua Gliddon |David Adams |Chryssie Swarbrick
Australia’s $3 billion craft beer sector is in crisis. The cost of living has affected consumer discretionary spending, which means less money is flowing through taprooms and the till. Input costs and the bill of materials going into a pint have risen at least 30% in the last 12 months, and excise increases every six months, linked to the CPI, are hitting profitability and the bottom line.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon
Artificial intelligence. You can’t move without being bombarded by people talking about AI. The problem is, AI has become a marketing term. The reality is that a lot of what’s being pushed as AI is really just clever software and machine learning. So, what’s AI? It’s technology that takes huge amounts of data and provides actionable insights based on pattern matching and finding connections that might not be apparent to humans. What’s this got to do with government?
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon
The Australian government has finally acknowledged ADF recruitment is in crisis. Any solution will take years to implement, and the situation has been exacerbated by the ADF deemphasising individual services in favour of an overall ‘ADF Careers’ rebrand. How bad is the situation? Former Defence honcho General Angus Campbell told Senate estimates in February the ADF is close to 4,500 people below its approved strength.
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon
It’s taken a decade so far and the ADF has very little to show for the money, time and effort expended on its new, services-wide enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. The idea was to unify the different services’ siloed software into one tool that was going to cost $1.5 billion. Costs have ballooned to an estimated $3.5 billion, and that’s assuming everything goes right from here on in.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon |John Glenn |Simon Jones |Tom Wadsworth
“Our goal is to help public purpose-driven organisations become stronger and have a lasting legacy of change,” says Richard Gwilym, Interim CEO and Advisory Leader at Scyne. Mr Gwilym says what sets Scyne apart is its focus on working with public purpose-driven organisations to deliver customised solutions for clients. Through partnerships and ethical practices, Scyne works to address societal challenges and contribute positively to the community, creating shared value beyond business outcomes.
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Oct 29, 2024 | 
themandarin.com.au | Joshua Gliddon |Esther Semo |Tim Timchur |Dan Cooke
Despite having cyber tools and teams, breaches at companies like Optus and Medibank have put cybersecurity front and centre for Australians and Australian organisations. Cybersecurity is now a board-level issue, but an even greater threat to the nation comes from critical infrastructure attacks, which can harm our national interest and our economy.
