Australia's AI Transparency Statements — a Mandatory Register Built After an Independent Audit Found Compliance Gaps

Under Australia's Policy for the Responsible Use of AI in Government, non-corporate Commonwealth entities (excluding Defence and intelligence agencies) were required to publish a public statement outlining their approach to AI adoption by 28 February 2025.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) reports that all 94 agencies subject to the mandate met the deadline, joined by 20 more publishing voluntarily — 114 statements in total. Statements are 'living documents,' required to be updated at least annually or whenever AI use changes materially.
Independent researchers at the ADM+S Centre, working with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, audited 224 federal agencies using automated site crawling, targeted search and manual inspection. They found only 29 statements were easily discoverable from an agency's own website, with a deeper search turning up 101 in total — most were not linked from agency homepages, and no penalty existed for non-compliance.
In response, the DTA built a centralised public register of AI transparency statements, addressing the discoverability gap the audit exposed. The episode sits against a backdrop of low public trust in government AI in Australia following the Robodebt royal commission's findings on inadequate algorithmic safeguards.

Read the full analysis: https://www.dta.gov.au/articles/new-central-register-ai-transparency-statements-commonwealth-entities