What’s Covered?
The Standard for AI Transparency Statements from Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is a concrete, compliance-ready guide that brings life to the Policy for Responsible Use of AI in Government. It sets out what every Australian government agency must include in their public AI use statement—and how to do it clearly, consistently, and accountably.
The standard requires agencies to publish a plain-language statement on their website that explains:
- Why AI is being used or considered
- A classification of the AI system based on its usage pattern and application domain (defined in Attachment A)
- Whether there is direct public interaction or significant impact without human intervention
- How the AI’s effectiveness is being monitored
- Whether it complies with relevant laws and regulations
- What safeguards are in place to reduce negative impacts
- How the agency is complying with the broader policy for responsible AI
- When the statement was last updated
This isn’t just an FYI requirement—it’s about creating a system of trust. Agencies must update these statements at least annually, or whenever something changes that affects accuracy. A contact email must also be provided for transparency and public accountability.
The policy is grounded in the OECD’s definition of AI systems, making it interoperable with global standards. Importantly, it explicitly covers AI systems with varying levels of autonomy and includes indirect AI impact (like background automation used in decision support systems).
Attachment A introduces a structured classification system:
- Usage Patterns: Decision-making and administrative action, analytics, workplace productivity, image processing
- Domains of Use: Service delivery, fraud detection, security, policy/legal, scientific, and internal operations
💡 Why it matters?
This standard gives clear operational shape to AI accountability in public institutions. By making transparency a mandatory and routine practice, it pushes agencies to stay aware of how their AI systems affect people—and gives the public a way to ask, check, and question. It’s not enough to use AI “responsibly”—you’ve got to show how. That’s what makes this document stand out.
What’s Missing?
While the standard lays out what information must be disclosed, it doesn’t go deep into how agencies should assess AI risk, how to handle trade secrets vs transparency, or what counts as a “material change” to an AI system. There’s also no review mechanism or central register to track who is in compliance. Agencies email a link to the DTA, but there’s no public-facing dashboard or watchdog. For the public, that means visibility depends on finding each agency’s page manually.
A future update could introduce a template generator or live validation checker to make statements easier to draft and standardize, particularly for smaller agencies.
Best For:
Any public sector team in Australia using—or planning to use—AI. Especially helpful for legal, privacy, comms, and transformation teams needing to prepare transparency materials for internal review and publication.
Source Details:
Title: Standard for AI Transparency Statements
Publisher: Digital Transformation Agency, Commonwealth of Australia
Version: 1.1 (2024)
Mandate Origin: Policy for Responsible Use of AI in Government
Licensing: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Authors: Digital Transformation Agency
Context: This is a binding direction under the AI policy for Australian government agencies. It is designed to work alongside internal assurance processes, and public service reforms aimed at boosting trust through transparency.
