{"id":69467,"date":"2025-08-15T05:29:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T05:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/69467\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T05:29:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T05:29:12","slug":"ato-considers-ai-coding-assistance-for-800-core-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/69467\/","title":{"rendered":"ATO considers AI coding assistance for 800 core developers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is exploring the use of artificial intelligence to assist its 800 core developers with addressing common programming issues.<\/p>\n<p>                                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"ContentPlaceHolder1_ucArticle_imgImage\" width=\"748\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755235752_38_ImageResizer.ashx\" alt=\"ATO considers AI coding assistance for 800 core developers\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The proposed AI coding assistant will offer features such as code suggestions, bug fixes, automated test case and script generation, and the ability to refactor codebases across multiple technologies.<\/p>\n<p>According to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tenders.gov.au\/Atm\/ViewDocuments\/613a99d7-e3f7-4425-9718-14ef252e7d92\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">request for tender<\/a>, the tool is intended to free up developers to \u201cfocus on higher value work\u201d such as test case planning, application security controls and maintaining existing technologies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ATO has a complex, multi-technology IT delivery environment, supporting over 800 core developers, spanning multiple technologies,\u201d the agency noted in a statement of requirements.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, the ATO is seeking a software-as-a-service solution that integrates with Microsoft\u2019s development environments, Visual Studio 2019 and 2022, alongside code editor Visual Studio Code.<\/p>\n<p>It must also integrate with the agency\u2019s Azure DevOps and Git repositories, and handle translating legacy code &#8211; like COBOL &#8211; into modern languages.<\/p>\n<p>A key security consideration highlighted in the tender is that any code processed by the AI won\u2019t be stored or used to train the model, addressing privacy and compliance concerns.<\/p>\n<p>The push to adopt AI in software development follows broader efforts across the ATO to embed artificial intelligence into its operations.<\/p>\n<p>The agency has identified five enterprise-level use cases for AI, including fraud detection, client risk profiling and document understanding.<\/p>\n<p>At the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itnews.com.au\/news\/ato-trials-multimodal-ai-models-for-auditing-work-related-expenses-619484\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">AI Innovation Showcase in Canberra<\/a>, ATO assistant commissioner for data science Ying Yang detailed how the agency is trialling large multimodal AI models to assist in auditing taxpayer-submitted documents.<\/p>\n<p>Yang outlined the ATO\u2019s internal framework for classifying AI capability into three tiers: scaled machine learning, augmentation, and intelligent automation.<\/p>\n<p>She described scaled machine learning as systems that \u201cmimic\u201d human instruction, similar to a student learning from a teacher.<\/p>\n<p>The next level, augmentation, encompasses generative AI and moves into self-learning and development.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHumans and AI become peers, and they contribute to each other from their own strengths,\u201d Yang said.<\/p>\n<p>The final tier, intelligent automation, involves AI expanding beyond procedural tasks to support judgment, creativity, and interpersonal interaction,\u00a0according to Yang\u2019s accompanying PowerPoint presentation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is exploring the use of artificial intelligence to assist its 800 core developers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-69467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}