Agenda

Jobs and Skills Australia’s research indicates that Australia’s transition to generative AI presents a significant opportunity for productivity growth through enhanced skills, increased output and time savings. The discussion will challenge assumptions about adoption, highlighting the different ways workers’ roles may be affected through automation and augmentation.

This session will focus on implications for the labour market and skills, areas that are central to both the benefits and risks of generative AI. Managing the transition will require a commitment to lifelong learning as jobs are reshaped, while labour mobility will also play an important role in helping workers adapt to change. From an organisational perspective, job redesign and workforce development are key to supporting meaningful adoption.

Trevor Gauld is Deputy Commissioner at Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA), where he plays a key role in shaping national skills strategies to meet Australia’s current and future workforce needs. With deep expertise in workforce development, vocational education, and strategic policy, Trevor brings a strong commitment to building a future-ready, inclusive, and skilled economy.

Every agency now has a Chief AI Officer, and in July the Prime Minister convened an Office of AI inside his own department.

The mandate is settled - June’s Government Edge proved it, and conviction was never the constraint. Workforce readiness is. It was that edition’s biggest barrier between pilot and operating model, and it has not moved: roles and skills built for predictable work do not hold for systems that reshape it. That gap is why near-universal adoption leaves only 6% of leaders reporting measurable gains.

In this opening address, ADAPT CEO Jim Berry sets the stakes for the day - why redesigning the operating model and building readiness over the next twelve months will decide which transformations deliver this decade, and why the credible frame is now capability built at the point of work, not tools bought at the top.

Agentic AI is moving into real workflows across the country, and the signal is starting to cut through the noise. Developing an AI strategy and roadmap is now the top agency goal, adopting and scaling AI the top initiative, and AI agents the number one investment priority at 73%.

But the value is landing unevenly. Matt Boon reflects on ADAPT’s research to show what separates the agencies turning adoption into measurable outcomes from those still running pilots - across attribution, capability and the operating model.

- What top performers do differently on attribution, metrics and the operating model
- Why only 16% redesign the work before scaling the tool, and what that costs the rest
- Why workforce readiness and governance, not the technology, are the barriers that bite
- How the best leaders move from baseline to decision, learning from peers who have done it

Every leader got the same memo: go AI-first, lift productivity, do more with less.

So your team adopted the tools. Usage is up. And yet the needle on actual value has barely moved, while your best people are drowning in deeper work and a rising tide of AI slop.

This keynote is your permission slip to stop measuring success by how much AI your team is using, and start leading the shift that actually matters. Because high adoption was never the finish line. It’s where the real leadership work begins.

Dr Amantha Imber (organisational psychologist, founder of Inventium.ai, and 2025 AI Consultant of the Year) isn’t here to talk at you about technology. She’s here to talk about the human side of this shift: how your people’s brains are actually coping, where all that value is leaking away, and what leading well looks like in the age of AI.

Walk away with:

- A clear read on why high adoption so rarely turns into real value, and where to intervene
- Why the most powerful thing you can do is model the change, not sponsor it
- A new leadership conversation: managing your team’s energy, not just their time
- How to protect sustainable performance and spot brain fry before it tips into burnout
- The difference between an AI product strategy and an AI learning strategy, and why you need both
- How to reset what “good work” looks like when volume is no longer the measure
- Your team doesn’t need you to push harder on AI. They need you to lead differently.

Government agencies have moved beyond AI experimentation and are now focused on scaling trusted AI to improve productivity, enhance service delivery, and deliver measurable outcomes across the enterprise. As the APS prepares for 2030, agencies must modernise operating models, build workforce capability, strengthen digital resilience, and prepare for emerging technologies that will shape the next decade, including quantum computing.

In this joint keynote, IBM and Government Leaders will explore how agencies can build the organisational foundations required to scale trusted AI while unlocking workforce productivity and preparing for the future. The discussion will examine how leaders are redesigning operating models, empowering employees with AI, balancing innovation with governance, navigating build-versus-buy decisions, and strengthening sovereign digital capabilities to enhance trust, resilience and long-term value.

Attendees will gain practical insights from real-world government experiences, learning how leading agencies are increasing productivity, transforming the way work is done, and building the capabilities needed to harness AI at scale while preparing their organisations for the technological opportunities and challenges of tomorrow.

APS leaders debate what must change - in workflows, workforce and governance - to move agencies from isolated AI pilots to adoption that scales and sticks.

- Moving from pilots to systematic scale - what has to change structurally
- Redesigning workflows and the human-agent balance without losing workforce trust
- Carrying the whole workforce through the shift, not just early adopters
- Centralised or decentralised - where should AI innovation actually sit
- Governing AI to scale safely and sustainably as adoption spreads

In government, you don’t get to move fast and fix things later. Every AI-enabled decision can become a public decision.

The challenge is no longer proving AI works. It’s operationalising it at scale across agencies, while maintaining a defensible record of who decided what, how and why.

As AI moves from pilots at the edges into core service delivery (processing cases, applying policy and coordinating across agency boundaries) sovereignty, security and accountability shift from policy principles to operational requirements.

Hear best-practice insights on how to:

- Maintain the auditability and traceability expected across the APS.
- Establish a unified control layer across models, agents, and automated actions.
- Keep people accountable for the decisions that matter, while enabling AI to operate at scale.

Artificial Intelligence is no longer confined to pilot programs - it is becoming a core pillar of modern digital infrastructure and a catalyst for secure, scalable public sector transformation. In this insightful session, we’ll explore how government agencies across Australia can harness trusted, sovereign AI to deliver better outcomes, strengthen resilience, and scale innovation with confidence.

Join us to gain a deeper understanding of:

- Evolving AI Landscape: From Experimentation to Infrastructure
- Systemic Barriers: Data, Skills, Interoperability and Governance
- Sovereign AI, Trust and Responsible Adoption
- Enablers for Scalable, Secure and Cost-Predictable Impact

Whether you’re shaping policy, managing infrastructure, or leading digital transformation, this session offers practical insights into how trusted AI infrastructure can help unlock Australia’s next wave of public sector innovation.