How can generative and agentic AI improve public auditing without weakening trust?

CSIRO’s Data61 has recently entered a multi year partnership with the Audit Office of New South Wales to explore how AI can support government audit functions in a transparent, accountable, and responsible way. I wanted to rephrase and share this after seeing the strong interest in how AI intersects with public sector assurance.

The focus so far has been deliberately foundational: shared leadership workshops, identifying credible AI use cases, scoping pilot projects, and assessing technology options through a responsible AI lens. This is less about rapid automation and more about building confidence in how AI is introduced into high trust public institutions.

What I find particularly encouraging is the alignment between audit practice and AI governance. Audit brings decades of experience in oversight, evidence, and accountability. Not only does AI support audit practice, but established audit oversight methods provide valuable guidance for supervising AI systems.

As Auditor General Bola Oyetunji noted, early signals around predictive analytics and large scale document analysis are promising, especially when underpinned by strong human oversight.

Papers: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5543018