ATO culture keeps a cap on agentic AI ambitions

The Australian Taxation Office is taking a cautious approach with agentic AI, reflecting its internal culture, risk appetite and sensitive data holdings, but is undertaking some initial architectural preparation work.

Assistant commissioner for strategy, design and architecture Jimmy Tzimopoulos told an IBM-run session at Gartner’s IT Symposium/Xpo that, at present, the internal view is that agentic AI might be utilised in only a small portion of an end-to-end process.

“What we’ve found, especially with agentic AI, [is that] you can achieve a lot of the use cases, but just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should,” Tzimopoulos said.

“There’s a tendency to say, ‘I’ll just get it all done by agentic.’ 

“But when we really assess the different use cases, we might find that 95 percent of them could be achieved through some form of re-engineering of process and then driving business automation, then maybe some machine learning, and then a bit of agentic at the end or as a component of it.

“I think that’s the thing for us that we’re learning about.”

Tzimopoulos highlighted the importance of safely learning about what agentic AI is and isn’t useful for.

“You’ve got to create an environment for people to learn with this capability,” he said.

Copilot could become a way that many staff are exposed to agentic technology within the ATO, although Tzimopoulos indicated that agentic capabilities for Copilot Chat are yet to be switched on.

“In the ATO, we use Copilot Chat, so we’re making that available to as many people as possible to use,” he said.

“We haven’t turned on the agentic component of that because we’ve got sensitive data, and we want to make sure that we understand how we use that.”

Tzimopoulos said the ATO is “architecting for the agentic space” – suggesting some behind-the-scenes preparatory work – but that the design and progress reflects ATO’s culture and risk appetite.

“As you would expect, we are a very risk-averse organisation,” he said.

“We’ve got the largest and most valuable data store of personal and business financial information in the country. 

“So naturally, we’re very cognisant and cautious to make sure that we treat that information appropriately.”

Tzimopoulos said that one of the principles guiding the ATO’s approach with agentic AI is its internal culture.

“You’ve got to architect your AI based upon the culture of your organisation,” he counselled. 

“If you’re risk-averse, make sure that you’ve got that reflected in how you deploy AI. Don’t be someone that you’re not.”

The ATO has also adapted the ‘human in the loop’ safeguard for AI to ‘human at the helm’.

“I know it’s only a slight tweak of language, but it goes to the accountability piece,” he said.

“Excuse the language – someone’s arse has got to be on the line for what you’re trying to achieve because in the end, we’re accountable for the outcomes to all citizens and residents of Australia, and therefore, that human really needs to be accountable for that.”

Forensic value analysis

Tzimopoulos also theorised that the AI era would create demand for “IT forensic accountants”, a role more commonly seen in financial crime contexts.

He suggested that such accountants could bring the skills required to forensically understand “the true total cost of ownership of delivering a service” that utilised AI componentry.

“We’re investing a lot for our use [AI] cases to actually understand what is the right financial models that support that, and also how do we present that information back to our business?” he said.

“For us, we’ve got an idea of potentially a balance sheet. Obviously the ATO will understand that. 

“But if we can actually present to a business line a balance sheet that shows who’s using it, and what the TCO is, and then they can correlate that back to how much they’re actually paying for the service, you’re starting to actually get them to think about what is the true value of this end-to-end process.

“You’re also getting them to think, ‘Do I need to do [a process] holistically using agentic, or can I actually compartmentalise it?’”

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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