FEATURE
“ Governance is really hard,” Pope said.“ There was a very public bad experience with AI making choices on behalf of people, without a human in the loop. So, for us, the ability to check, validate and verify at every step was non-negotiable.”
Moving beyond businesshours service
The FWC is Australia’ s national workplace relations tribunal, handling issues including unfair dismissal, workplace disputes and minimum wages.
Pope believes a significant proportion of people approaching the Commission could receive the information they need through agentic systems rather than having to wait for staff operating during conventional business hours.
FWC therefore needed an AI platform that could operate within Australian government security requirements while allowing its relatively small technology team to develop applications quickly.
The Commission selected Workato and took an unusual approach to implementation. Before the contract had even been signed, Pope insisted that his team receive practical platform training.
“ I specifically said I don’ t want to see a single sales pitch as part of the onboarding week,” he said.“ Just show me how to build stuff.”
FWC moved from completed procurement to onboarding within a week, with its technology team attempting to build and deploy its first Workato AI agent, known as a Genie, on the first day.
Introducing such technology into government, however, brings significant compliance requirements. Security standards, IRAP certification, data sovereignty and rules governing automated decision-making all have to be addressed before systems can move into production.
For us, the ability to check, validate and verify at every step was non-negotiable.
36
INTELLIGENT CIO APAC www. intelligentcio. com