Government Innovation Showcase South Australia

• Driving the digital economy and navigating the next frontier of digital-first – meeting expectations for connected and responsive services
• Taking advantage of digital advancements to increase the speed of government services, and creating a strong skills pipeline
• Digital inclusivity: Driving greater digital equity
• Future Government: assessing emerging trends and required capabilities

• Moving from ‘data & analytics’ to ‘data & AI’: unlocking quality to become truly AI ready
• Unlocking the value of SA’s vast data assets to enable service innovation and delivery
• Building trust – how can we bring the public along for the journey?

• Sense-checking successful approaches toward IT modernisation – exploring promising initiatives leading into 2025 and continuing to build momentum
• Leveraging cloud technologies to enhance operational performance and facilitate service innovation
• Modernisation drivers and risks: how to meet the needs of continued digital transformation and effectively establish and prioritise a modernisation roadmap

• The 2025-2028 skills gap – what are the emerging capability requirements and where do our efforts need to be focused?
• What can we offer and where can we further develop our point of difference?
• Creating pathways for progression between SA Agencies – how can we work more collaboratively to remain attractive to employees?

Highlighting the pivotal role of effective data management in realising AI's potential. As we reach the crucial juncture of widespread AI adoption by governments and enterprises, we explore how AI has fundamentally transformed data management practices. The discussion emphasizes AI's impact on scaling new projects by ensuring data quality, governance, and interoperability—a necessary foundation for successful AI deployment. Through industry-specific use cases, such as personalised healthcare and precision agriculture, the presentation illustrates AI's transformative capabilities, setting the stage for future innovation and economic benefits.

• Inclusive by design, accessible by default – revolutionising the approach to ‘no one left behind’.
• Latest strategies, tools and technologies to better understand induvial customer needs and designing digital/in-person service accordingly
• User-Centricity – harnessing co-creation and user feedback to design next gen digital experiences citizens want and need
• Leveraging co-design for first nations engagement and ‘closing the gap’ deliverables.

• Moving from ‘data & analytics’ to ‘data & AI’: unlocking quality to become truly AI ready
• Unlocking the value of SA’s vast data assets to enable service innovation and delivery
• Building trust – how can we bring the public along for the journey?
• Enabling hyper-scalability – mastering MVG: Minimal Viable Governance

Benjamin Lamont

Manager, Technology Strategy and Data, Australian Federal Police

Shikha Sharma

CIO, Department of Human Services

Sally Smith

Deputy Chief Executive, Department for Housing and Urban Development

• Empowering women to pursue careers in tech, digital and cyber: how can we best equip them with the skills and knowledge to actively shape Australia’s technology landscape?
• Where do the current challenges and barriers exist preventing women from advancing in tech? Exploring inclusive policies & practices
• Inspiring creativity, innovation & technical proficiency among emerging tech talent and leaders
• Fostering leadership qualities among technical talent, and nurturing new perspectives

• Building a talent pipeline for AUKUS
• Creating and upskilling a diverse workforce: leveraging underutilised skillsets within refugee, neurodivergent and first nations peoples
• Making SA public sector the #1 choice for top talent: Unpacking creative and effective recruitment strategies
• Avoiding ‘talent leakage’ to keep SA public sector skills inhouse: referring talent and creating pathways for progression between Agencies

Sally Nicholas

Executive Director, People & Culture, Department of Human Services

Graeme Jackson

Executive Director, People and Corporate Services, Department for Infrastructure and Transport

Billie-Jo Barbara

Former CHRO, Department for Child Protection

• Delivering a personalised, digitally enabled health service to NSW citizens – unpacking successes to date, and assessing priorities into 2025
• Unlocking value-based healthcare, the integration of care, and improving the patient experience
• Balancing digitisation and self-service with human connections: Striking the X-factor
• Tapping into the value of collaboration and partnerships

• Pushing for innovation, while navigating risk, ethics and AI bias – developing responsible AI application
• Actionable AI: Democratising secure generative AI tools into everyday activity
• The impact of generative AI: exploring implications, requirements and opportunities within SA Government
• Exploring different models of access to AI through the organisation: GenAI platforms, productivity tools, and enterprise tools

• Defining your strategy for modernisation to achieve agility, resilience and innovation and overcome legacy system limitations to enable emerging applications and tools
• Achieving simplification rather than proliferation of technology
• Overcoming legacy system limitations to enable emerging applications and tools
• Navigating the logistics: sense-checking successful strategies for integration

• Unveiling priority defence innovation initiatives into 2025 and beyond
• Creating a strong workforce and skills pipeline for the defence and space sector
• How do we further progress and facilitate innovation in the SA defence ecosystem?
• Effective approaches to harnessing collaboration between industry, defence, academia and government

• Meeting needs = trust. How do we build and retain a solid connection with the customer?
• Sense-checking serviceability: How can we become better equipped to understand emerging needs and promptly cater to these?
• Building a ‘simple’ service experience that meets all customer expectations

• Emerging regulatory landscape for AI in public sector.
• Implementing bias evaluation to ensure ethical AI for inclusive and effective solutions
• Applied AI risk management and governance
• Exploring methods and tools for assessing and mitigating bias in AI datasets and models to adhere to ethical standards

Dr Melanie McGrath

Research Fellow, Human Trust in Collaborative Intelligence Systems, Data 61 CSIRO

Ben Taylor

Assistant Commissioner, Data Insights, Australian Taxation Office

Jeannie Sim

Chief Digital Health Officer & Director Cybersecurity and Assurance, Department of Health

Dr Melissa McCradden

AI Director, Women's and Children's Hospital Network

• Treating your legacy debt while meeting the technology challenge – how do you make good on both?
• Navigating high storage costs associated with emerging technology – do you pay up or stay behind?
• The CIO challenge of bringing the frontline narrative to your organisation, then the business narrative.
• Developing an operationally focused business case that talks to the narrative of government – how can you convince government to invest?

Nathan Heeney

Chief Information Officer, Australian Federal Police

Stuart Watt

Chief Information Officer, Department of Primary Industries and Regions

Chris Bernardi

Chief Operating Officer /Chief Financial Officer, Department for Education

• Which tasks should humans let go? Aligning humans and machines to their individual strengths for ultimate collaboration and efficiency
• The new workforce requirements: upskilling staff to partner with AI
• Where to apply technology, and what to leave to people
• Aligning technology, people and process strategies to hit the sweet spot in operational excellence
• Leveraging human strengths: making people a pillar in your strategy

• Keeping up with the increasing pressure and expectation on fast delivery, excellent and personalised customer service – what are the capabilities needed to meet this in 2025?
• Trust: innovation and delivery vs privacy and security. Are they opposing forces and how do we handle these together where trust in government is an inherent battle
• Delivering on the current and emerging needs of citizens – Creating data driven organisations, continual customer feedback, culture of continuous improvement, empowering teams to innovate

• The future of LLMs and the need for SA AI ownership: Will we take control or outsource to USA?
• The opportunity to do a better job of governance.
• Weighing the opportunities and risks of embedding LLMs within SA Government
• How LLMs surpass ethical AI as the critical consideration we should be addressing
• Improving the management of information security risks in the use of LLMs

• Shaping the service of tomorrow: The vision for digital public services into 2025 and beyond
• Navigating the next frontier of digital-first citizens and the technology requirements to underpin next-gen digital delivery- meeting expectations for connected and responsive services
• Defining your strategy for modernisation to achieve agility, resilience and innovation
• Technology as an enabler of modern service delivery: creating the right foundation to support future innovation

• Adopting a hackathon approach to regenerative tourism: Leveraging co-creation, cost-cut collaboration, and removing siloes
• Creating an All-of-State approach to enhancing the State's tourism economy – the secrets to success in collaboration and partnerships
• The ‘people’ lense on tourism: Leveraging insights to adapt and meet changing customer needs
• The DNA of SA: The importance of Place Brand, and bringing it to life.  

• OPEX for CX: Unpacking successful approaches, tools and strategies to modernising service delivery
• Breaking down barriers when innovating within government
• Assessing emerging demands on service capability -where do the priorities challenges and opportunities lie in 2025
• Integrating people, process and technology to drive effective operational innovation and better customer outcomes

• The art of navigating multiple technology terrains – keeping up with ever-changing business and citizen digital demands and scaling initiatives
• Developing the technology workforce required to meet future demands – empowering employees to meet digital/ IT business demands and prioritising future-oriented skills
• Making the right investment decisions amidst competing priorities – using discernment in new technology and digital services
• Powering collaboration to drive improved business outcomes – creating and fostering an innovation ecosystem

Richard Hill

CIO, Department for Infrastructure and Transport

Elise Vervetjes

Chief Information Officer, SA Water

Dan Hughes

CIO, Department for Education

• Strengthening the states research and innovation capabilities
• Attracting and retaining key talent for the State
• Accelerating research capability and increasing awareness of critical technology in AI, Cyber, Quantum and photonics
• Partnerships: government and academia collaboration to drive industrial outcomes
• Driving industry adoption and collaboration with AI and innovation

Di Dixon

State Project Lead, Lot Fourteen, Department of Premier and Cabinet SA

Professor Anton van den Hengel

Director, Centre for Augmented Reasoning (CAR) Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), University of Adelaide

Dr Andrew Dunbar

Executive Director, Research and Innovation, Department of State Development

Lea Diffey

Deputy Director-General, Innovation, Department of Tourism and Sport QLD

• Building the culture on data assets, security and data analytics
• Driving better decision making and problem solving within the organization
• Embedding smarter data and smarter analytics initiatives
• Working collaboratively: Discerning and integrating human and AI strengths and skillsets for optimal business outcomes