AI adoption across Australian Public Service depends on trust, alignment and imagination, Poole says

Lucy Poole, deputy CEO of the Strategy, Planning and Performance Division of the Australian Digital Transformation Agency, outlined three priorities for AI adoption across the Australian Public Service in a keynote at the 12th Annual Data and Digital Governance Summit: imagination, alignment, and how people experience government in practice.

In her account, the next phase is no longer just about using AI to speed up existing processes, but about considering how it could reshape decision-making, service delivery, and the relationship between government and the public.

Poole argued that public institutions need to create the conditions for more ambitious thinking about AI in administration. As she put it, governments are still often asking AI to help them do what they have always done, only faster.

The larger opportunity, she suggested, lies in using it to surface patterns across fragmented systems, support judgement in complex policy settings, and help reframe problems rather than process them more efficiently.

That ambition, however, runs into a more practical challenge: the APS is not moving at a single speed. Poole said agencies face different legacy systems, risk settings, and service obligations, making uneven progress almost inevitable. However, the central issue is no longer simply whether departments are adopting AI quickly enough, but whether that adoption can be aligned coherently across government over time.

She also warned against treating AI as a substitute for good public service design. On accessibility in particular, Poole argued that automated tools cannot solve underlying design failures on their own, stressing that accessibility cannot simply be automated into existence. The point was not to dismiss AI support, but to underline that public institutions still have to design services around real human needs.

Poole also pointed to the growing relevance of agentic AI, saying governments will increasingly have to confront questions of delegation, accountability, intervention, and trust as more capable systems begin to move closer to public-facing services.

That shifts the debate from efficiency alone to governance: not just what AI can do, but what public institutions should allow it to do, under what safeguards, and with what human oversight.

Her broader message was that AI does not alter the basic principles of public administration, but it does raise the standard for how carefully those principles must be applied. The speech framed AI adoption in government less as a technology rollout than as a test of institutional coordination, service design, and public trust.

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