Productivity by design

How Government investment in AI translates to better outcomes for Australian citizens

Article | 2026-08-17

5 minute read

As departments and agencies align to the productivity agenda, it is inevitable they will look to technology to help drive efficiency and public value through modernisation.

Australia’s Government has invested significantly in digital transformation. Broad‑scale modernisation has delivered improved services, new collaboration tools, expanded cloud adoption, and a growing focus on AI. Yet, many government employees still spend valuable time searching for information, fixing avoidable problems, or re‑keying the same data into different systems. Citizens, too, often repeat details the government already holds. When this happens, taxpayers ask a fair question: What value are we getting from the investment?

This question is even more pressing today. Australia’s labour productivity growth (*1) has slowed to 1.1% per year over the past decade, half the growth seen in the 1990s. The Government has also signaled that productivity will be a central focus of the coming Budget.

In an environment shaped by global uncertainty and rising geopolitical pressures, the productivity agenda becomes even more important as government takes action to improve resilience of the country. As departments and agencies align to this agenda, it is inevitable they will look to technology to help drive efficiency and public value through modernisation.

However, modernisation is not just about technology. Its goal should always seek to improve citizen and employee experience (*2) through better services for people and better processes and systems for workers. This is how digital spend delivers productivity, trust, and long‑term public value.

Unlocking the potential of AI

The latest State of the Service Report 2024-25 (*3) discusses a public sector system that is lifting capability and strengthening stewardship, with reforms that focus on people, integrity, and delivery. It describes a workforce that is service driven and eager to learn new skills.

However, there are practical pressures that cannot be ignored. Ageing technology is hard to change and costly to secure. Critical data remains locked in silos, and processes reflect legacy system limits. The result is a workday that often feels harder than it should. These challenges flow through to the public in the form of, who experience delays, repeated questions, and decisions that can be hard to understand. If modernisation is going to earn public trust, it must fix these everyday pains in a visible way.

The use of AI across the public sector is starting to move, and for good reason. AI can help employees triage cases, draft correspondence, summarise long files and identify large dataset patterns, offering significant potential to streamline processes and gain efficiencies. But the opportunity comes with challenges. Weak data foundations, governance gaps, and opaque algorithms can erode trust and adoption. Public sector AI must be responsible: transparent, auditable, and supported by human‑in‑the‑loop oversight, especially where sensitive data or high‑risk decisions are involved.

Unlocking the potential from AI requires more than adding technology to the stack. Success demands a fundamental shift in the way agencies organise, operate and deliver services; it is a transformation that considers human–machine collaboration at its core. This will look different across different agencies based on factors such as funding, level of maturity, and risk appetite. It will inform which elements of the organisation can function using AI, a hybrid human-AI or purely human involvement. What might this look like?

Experience matters

Successful transformation and the adoption of technology in government has always relied on understanding and designing to meet the needs, motivations and expectations of the humans that interact with it. When the experience is poor, trust erodes, adoption drops, and even the best technology fails to deliver its intended value.

In Australia, trust in government is declining. The Edelman Trust Barometer (2025) (*4) has found that trust in government has fallen by 4% compared to 2024, trailing behind the level of trust that Australians have in Business and NGO’s. Before any productivity gains can be made, trust in government from both employees and citizens must be improved. Agencies that use an experience-led approach to design an AI-enabled organisation and service delivery model will lead in building trust and turning their digital investment into increased productivity and visible outcomes.

Value now, and flexible foundations for what comes next

Public sector leaders must operate across two horizons: delivering visible value within the current planning cycle while building a digital foundation flexible enough to keep pace with rapidly evolving AI. The good news is that both can be achieved at once.

Value now focuses on the next 6–18 months. Target those journeys where the organisation can save the most time or reduce the most risk. Stabilise the basics. Introduce AI in narrow, safe, and explainable use cases. Measure human outcomes and build trust step by step so staff and citizens feel the improvement.

Flexible foundations require parallel investment in what takes time: consentful data products, strong identity and access controls, common patterns for explainability and human‑in‑the‑loop oversight, and consistent standards for devices and meeting spaces. These elements form a digital core designed for adaptability, not just capability.

This approach respects political cycles, demonstrates value early, and gives government a platform that can scale as AI accelerates.

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Key takeaways for leaders:

1. Revisit the Agency’s mission and how it can be achieved with a human-AI perspective

2. Seek to understand how workers experience the workplace and how constituents experience government’s current services. Design to elevate those experiences and meet needs more efficiently with AI.

3. Start with improving the employee experience through AI driven digital workspace and connect it deliberately to achieve better citizen experience.

4. Design the organisation for safe human-machine collaboration and delivery of services through an informed choice of AI models, infrastructure and readiness of data.

5. Measure impact for continuous improvement.

The Treasurer has made productivity the central focus (*5) of the next phase of economic management. He has emphasised (*6) the need to lift the economy’s speed limit by improving productivity, strengthening resilience, and supporting budget sustainability.

A human‑centric, AI‑enabled digital workplace directly advances this agenda. It enables agencies to deliver more public value with the resources they already have. It cuts avoidable costs by reducing rework and accelerating strong decision‑making. It builds staff capability, confidence, and morale. And it establishes shared digital foundations that support cross‑agency collaboration and create a more consistent experience for the public. To achieve this, agencies need a partner who can help them start where they are, focus on what matters most, and build from there.

This is how taxpayer investment becomes visible public value: fewer forms, faster answers, clearer reasons, trusted tools, and services people want to use. That is productivity by design, and it is within reach now.

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Footnotes

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Leonie Costello,
Partner, Uvance Wayfinders

Leonie is an experienced senior leader specialising in strategic business design and digital transformation At Uvance Wayfinders, Consulting by Fujitsu she works with clients to design and transform their business through technology and AI. She brings deep experience working with governments across Australia and New Zealand in the use of digital and innovative design of citizen centric services, products, and policy to enhance the citizen experience and drive improved economic and social outcomes.

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Uvance Wayfinders
Consulting by Fujitsu

Uvance Wayfinders combines AI-native consulting, deep industry expertise, and Fujitsu's technology capabilities to help organisations turn strategy into measurable business outcomes.