A quiet revolution is under way inside the Tasmanian public service – and not everyone is fully on board.
It began with the AI chatbot Microsoft Copilot, deployed since at least early 2024 and embedded in the pre-existing productivity software used by the state government.
Today, other platforms run alongside it, with still more being explored and trialled.
The Mercury contacted all government departments, government business enterprises (GBEs), and state-owned companies to ask them about their AI use.
In lieu of individual answers from the departments, a whole-of-government response was provided, which did not detail specific uses in each agency.
Nearly all GBEs and state-owned companies answered this masthead’s questions.
Several government entities indicated they were now using additional AI tools to Copilot for administrative and analytical tasks.
A spokesman for TT-Line, the state-owned ferry operator, said the business had implemented its own AI policy and used Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, plus the AI legal platform Plexus to manage contracts.
Other GBEs implied they were actively deploying, or exploring the potential to deploy, a range of AI systems but did not specify the exact tools to which they were referring.
The owner of Tasmania’s mainline railways, TasRail, said it was in the early stages of investigating the use of AI for “large dataset modelling and analysis” to help identify track geometry faults and improve fuel efficiency and conservation.
Innovation, Science and Digital Economy Minister Madeleine Ogilvie told the Mercury that Thursday’s state budget would include $4m to “identify, test, and scale” expanded AI use in the public service, with an eye to improving “efficiency and productivity”, while also reducing “regulatory and administrative burden”.
“The AI Accelerator project will work across agencies to drive adoption and implementation,” she said.
Russell Kelly, the CEO of peak tech sector body TasICT, said AI was “not going to take people’s jobs” and workers who knew how to use it effectively would “become more productive and more useful”, provided they received appropriate training.
“The benchmarks we are seeing emerge are that AI can reduce the time taken to do some tasks by between 10-20 per cent,” he said.
“This saving can be used on higher-value tasks that improve services for Tasmanians and the quality of decision-making.”
In September 2024, the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPAC) published guidelines for the use of AI in state government settings, which included transparency commitments and flagged the establishment of a whole-of-government “AI initiative register”.
Eighteen months later, this measure has still not been implemented, despite the public sector’s increasing experimentation with the technology.
Mr Kelly said Tasmania’s tech sector wanted to see AI implemented in the “right” way and he was “concerned” the promised register had not yet been delivered.
Dr Alexandra Sinclair, a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, said AI had the capacity to create remarkable societal benefits but the government needed to be upfront with the public about how exactly it was using these platforms.
“The failure to institute … a register in Tasmania means there is no visibility within government of how AI is being used by departments and [it] does not allow for any public scrutiny or debate,” she said.
Dr Sinclair said such a register should be made public and provide granular detail about how AI models were being used and the state should “ideally” appoint an independent AI commissioner or oversight body.
“There is also a concern about the amount of power governments are giving private tech companies to facilitate government infrastructure and deliver government services,” Dr Sinclair said.
“There should be transparency about this so the public can have a conversation around whether handing over power to those companies is desirable.”
Ms Ogilvie said the AI initiative register had not originally been designed as “a tool for risk management or compliance monitoring”.
Since the publication of the state’s AI guidelines, the function of the proposed register, due to be “finalised” later this year, has been “reconsidered” and would now be “expanded to better support governance and transparency in AI use”, according to the minister.
A government spokeswoman said a “road map” and policy were being developed for the “responsible and effective” use of AI in the public service.
Approved use of the technology within government departments currently involves secure, enterprise-grade software that is called on for such tasks as “drafting assistance, transcription, summarisation, research support, and workflow efficiency”, the spokeswoman said.
Public servants are bound by privacy laws and are prohibited from entering personal information into AI platforms.
Community and Public Sector Union general secretary Thirza White said AI did not have to result in job cuts, as long as it was deployed appropriately and backed by “significant” investment.
“What we are seeking is an agreement between unions and the employer around AI that puts in place guardrails, guarantees no job losses, and establishes a training fund that ensures that any productivity benefits are shared with workers,” she said.
“We are concerned … that government is encouraging workers to adopt these tools but not providing them with adequate training or risk frameworks – and then we’re putting workers in a situation where they can inadvertently do the wrong thing.”
The efficiency and productivity unit within DPAC is currently trialling an “AI Assistant Platform” using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service, which features enterprise protections and boasts agentic capabilities that give users the ability to create autonomous agents that can automate decision-making and operate with limited to no human oversight.
The Mercury asked DPAC if agentic AI was being incorporated into the trial but did not receive a response by deadline.
The initiative comes amid deepening ties between the government and Microsoft, with the global tech behemoth hosting the “Tasmanian Government AI Discovery Day” at Wrest Point earlier this month.
The event was attended by Ms Ogilvie, other government representatives, and Microsoft partner companies.
A Microsoft spokesman said the AI Discovery Day was designed to help “organisations have the skills and capabilities to capture the economic and social opportunities that AI presents”.
DISCLAIMER: In reporting this story, the journalist used Google’s NotebookLM for document analysis and Anthropic’s Claude for research tasks, verifying all information generated by AI against primary sources before accepting it as accurate.AI was not used to produce any of the text in the story, which was entirely the work of the journalist.