Artificial Intelligence (AI) transparency statement

The Digital Transformation Agency's Policy for the responsible use of AI in government sets out the Australian Government approach to embrace the opportunities of AI and provide for safe and responsible use of AI. Transparency is critical to building public trust and is an important aim of the policy and broader APS Reform agenda.

National Archives of Australia (National Archives) is dedicated to ongoing refinement and enhancement of our AI capabilities. We will be transparent as we enable and prepare, engage, monitor, adopt, review, evolve and integrate and pivot to changes in AI technology, environment and policy requirements.

At National Archives, Artificial Intelligence (AI) describes a family of technologies that can bring together computing power, scalability, networking, connected devices and interfaces, and data. AI systems can be programmed to perform specific tasks such as reasoning, planning, natural language processing, computer vision, audio processing, interaction, prediction and more. AI systems can operate with varying levels of autonomy.

National Archives' Access to publicly available AI (Artificial Intelligence) from NAA systems outlines our principles, our risk analysis and the approval process through the Information and Data Governance Committee (IDGC) for business use of AI.

National Archives has processes to ensure:

  • our AI use is appropriately governed
  • our engagement with AI is confident, safe and responsible
  • our stakeholders have trust in our use of AI
  • our risks are identified and addressed
  • our AI access and usage is monitored.

Currently, National Archives does not use AI in any services or advice we provide externally (publicly) or internally. If we do implement any AI capability, we will update this statement to outline our use, with a summary of:

  • the intentions behind why National Archives uses AI or is considering its adoption
  • classification of AI use according to required outcomes and AI system or tool
  • classification of use where the public may directly interact with, or be significantly
  • impacted by, AI without a human intermediary or intervention
  • measures to monitor the effectiveness of deployed AI systems, such as governance or
  • processes
  • compliance with applicable legislation and regulation
  • efforts to identify and protect the public against negative impacts
  • compliance with each requirement under the Policy for the responsible use of AI in government.

For enquiries, please contact us.

This statement will be reviewed annually, when we make a significant change to our approach to AI, or when any new factor impacts this statement.

Authorised by Leigh Berrell
Chief Information Officer
Assistant Director-General Data and Digital
10 September 2024