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, integrate and pivot to changes in AI, the technology environment and Government policy requirements.

Accountable Official

The National Archives’ Assistant Director-General, Technology, as Chief Information Officer, is the accountable official for Artificial Intelligence within Archives, including implementation of Australian Government policy requirements. This includes ensuring National Archives is positioned for monitoring, measurement and capability development with AI. Central to this is a strong approach to governance, seeking to balance a culture of risk management with innovation.

Governance

The National Archives Access to publicly available AI (Artificial Intelligence) from NAA systems, outlines our principles, our risk tolerance, and the approval process for business use of publicly available AI. The Archives seeks to leverage our existing governance bodies and utilises the Information and Data Governance Committee (IDGC) for consideration of AI business cases.

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.

Use of AI by National Archives

National Archives is using AI internally in a limited fashion for business purposes, focussing on pilots refining ways of working. We do not use AI in any external services or advice we provide to the public. 

The primary use cases for internal AI adoption centre relate to:

• text summarisation
• ideation
• review of non-sensitive outputs.

Review

The National Archives will continue to update this transparency statement to reflect implementation and adoption of AI technology. This statement will be reviewed annually, when making a significant change to our approach to AI, or when any new factors impact this statement.

For further enquiries, please contact us.

Authorisation

Authorised by:
Assistant Director-General, Technology
Chief Information Officer
Chief Information Security Officer
2 July 2025