A roadmap for responsible AI adoption in Australia’s public service

On the back of a year-long ‘AI in Government’ benchmarking initiative in collaboration with The Mandarin, Liquid has today released a practical roadmap for responsible AI adoption, providing a through line towards the future vision of a more joined-up, collaborative, proactive and trusted Australian public service.

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The strongest AI outcomes in government will not come from technology alone.

Australia’s public service stands at a pivotal crossroads in its adoption of AI for best possible outcomes. Now and into the future.

Intentionally designed, human-centred AI systems are already responding to the high standards expected in regulatory environments. And governance frameworks are now in place, following release of the Australian Government’s APS AI Plan in November 2025.

But, across government, AI adoption is still largely at a nascent stage, and readiness varies within and between agencies and departments.

So where to from here?

“This is a leadership, not a technology challenge: rarely have we had to design the future of government at this scale or pace.” – Liquid CEO Fiona Armstrong

Liquid’s roadmap draws together insights from Commonwealth regulators, departmental leaders and hundreds of public servants across the country. It takes a staged, 3-horizon approach: incrementally building the behavioural change, capability and trust needed to introduce new ways of working in a fast-changing landscape.

Each stage provides guidance on how to responsibly accelerate AI implementation through human-centred system design that focuses on understanding the opportunity and configuring the right solution with the right technology in a way that’s re-usable for scalability.

This resource assumes a baseline familiarity with AI and focuses instead on how public servants can seize the leadership challenge to:

Remove friction inside government

Redesign priority services around people

Redefine how government and citizens interact

North Star 
All roadmaps need a North Star. A vision for where we want to be. For this roadmap we propose an Australian public service where AI helps deliver joined-up, trusted and more human government: reducing administrative burden today; redesigning priority services tomorrow; and ultimately enabling better social and community outcomes for all Australians.

A roadmap for responsible AI adoption in Australia’s public service

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