Tech in Gov 2026: Adopting AI in local government with maximum impact

Summary:  At Tech in Gov 2026, a panel of local government leaders discussed adopting AI with maximum impact. The panel covered how to build staff confidence, measuring impact, keeping data sovereign, real-world council use cases, and why AI is an organisational challenge rather than an IT one.

Date:
18 August 2026
Author:
Phillipa Martin
 
Phillipa Martin is Salsa’s Rules as Code Practice Lead and Content Strategist.

Panel: Adoption of AI in local government with maximum impact

Panel — 4 August 2026, 4:25pm

  • Scott Newman, former Enterprise Solutions Architect, Devonport City Council
  • Tasleem Ullah, ICT Program Manager, Campbelltown City Council
  • Lisa Ippolito, AI Enablement Lead, Whitehorse City Council
  • George Ye - Head of AI sovereignty infrastructure, Southern Cross
  • Moderator: Justin Daly, Emerging Technologies Lead, Mornington Peninsula Shire

This Day 1 panel brought together local government practitioners to talk about adopting AI with maximum impact. Key themes were upskilling staff, measuring the impact of AI and sample use cases.

Building staff confidence to use AI

Justin Daly asked the panel how they were building staff confidence to use AI internally.

Lisa Ippolito said WhitehorseExternal Link starts with a governance focus — making sure the guardrails are in place so the council isn't going to breach anything. They’ve also been running training sessions, and have noticed a significant increase in the number of people using AI over the past 10 months. Whitehorse also developed a capability score to understand the enablers and risks for adoption, along with the barriers to adoption, and created four user profiles in terms of AI use. Ippolito noted that 26% of local government staff are using AI every day and saving 7.5 hours a week.

Measuring impact

Next, Daly asked the panel about measuring the of AI use in local government. Scott Newman gave the example of setting up a chatbot: calls to customer service decreased, so staff could focus on other tasks rather than answering phone calls. In terms of general AI use, his media and comms officer, who would previously spend hours writing press releases, now spends 10 minutes and can focus more on social media, which has increased social media engagement. These are tangible benefits.

Daly added that while they measure how much time is being saved by an AI tool, there's also a need to focus on what you do with the time that's handed back.

He then asked Tasleem Ullah what he's looking for in AI use across the organisation. The answer: understanding the impact and value, doing a benefit analysis up front, and setting up a governance process. The focus has been on shifting thought processes: start with the problem and the benefits, alongside governance.

He also pointed out that AI can be sovereign. Tas referred to the fact that Australia invented WiFi, and said we can lead on AI too — and that we should send data points within Australia rather than overseas.

Best use cases

Daly asked the panel for the best AI use cases they'd come across.

Scott Newman described one of the more powerful use cases: reporting an issue. Rather than filling in a form, you can simply take a photo and send it, and AI captures the location and provides a description.

Tasleem Ullah said CampbelltownExternal Link is just getting started across council operations and field services. For example, automatically identifying hazardous risks on the road and generating service orders, feeding both long-term and short-term asset planning. Another is traffic modelling: implementing interaction cameras that count numbers, do modelling, and identify what traffic controls could be implemented. He noted they needed to pivot mid-procurement to make sure the data stayed sovereign.

George Ye said their biggest use case is vibe coding. A second, practical use case relevant to government is document processing: historically, data science could only work on tables, but with large language models you can now use documents for analysis.

Lisa Ippolito made the point that the biggest problem to be solved isn't necessarily the best use case. You need to find a welcomed use of AI — for example, Teams-enabled AI summaries that avoid the need for minute-taking. That's a welcomed and celebrated use case because it takes away the pain from meetings.

Ippolito also described an AI competition and showcase she ran, which produced a catalogue of how people are using AI, along with a set of 50 enterprise use cases. Each of those organisations decided what was the best use case for them, and they were all trying to solve different problems. The best use case depends on the lens you look at it through — councillors, for instance, have a different idea of the best and most important use case. The event was hosted at Google's HQ in Melbourne. She also pointed audience members to the Victorian AI Adoption ReportExternal Link .

Questions: knowledge sharing and ownership

There were two main themes in the short question time: knowledge sharing and AI ownership.

The panel reflected that maximum impact for local councils is about knowledge sharing. Daly offered to share his council's governance framework, noting they're not competing with other councils.

The second question was around the fact that AI sits within IT, noting HR’s role in AI adoption. George Ye mentioned that in enterprise, AI is normally brought in by executives but goes to the IT team to make sure governance meets IT's requirements. Daly noted that at MorningtonExternal Link , when he joined he was in customer experience and transformation, and has now moved into IT.

The closing point: AI is not an IT problem, it's an organisational problem. Businesses need to have an owner — even just for subscriptions and renewals.