Owned by: Accountable Official
AI impact assessments
Assess each in-scope use case before deployment, against the DTA tool and Australia's AI Ethics Principles.
What is required
Prior to deployment, agencies must complete an AI impact assessment for each in-scope use case. The DTA publishes an AI impact assessment tool to support this.
Remaining requirements under the policy commence December 2026.
Why this is harder than it looks
The tool tells you what to assess, not how to reach a defensible answer. Assessments done without technical input tend to record intentions rather than evidence — which is exactly what fails on review when a use case is later challenged.
What you get
Artefacts, not activity. Each engagement is fixed in scope and leaves your team able to repeat the work without us.
- Completed impact assessments for prioritised use cases, aligned to the DTA tool and Australia's AI Ethics Principles
- Evidence packs behind each assessment, so a conclusion can be defended rather than asserted
- Risk treatments and human-oversight arrangements proportionate to each use case
- A repeatable assessment process your team runs for the next use case without us
- Escalation criteria identifying which use cases warrant deeper technical evaluation
Primary sources
The other obligations
AI use-case register
Find every in-scope AI use across the agency and record it, with an accountable officer against each one.
AI technical standard conformance
Evidence the Evaluate and Monitor phases of the AI technical standard — including adversarial testing.
Foundational AI training
Mandatory foundational AI training for all staff, differentiated by what each role actually does with AI.
A procurement pathway that already exists
Commonwealth agencies do not need to run a tender or find us on a panel to work with us. The rules already provide a direct route for engaging an Australian SME, and the facts your procurement delegate needs are set out below.
We meet the CPRs definition of an SME
Comware is an Australian business (ABN 69 054 484 347) based in Melbourne. The Commonwealth Procurement Rules define an SME as an Australian or New Zealand business with fewer than 200 full-time equivalent employees, counted across associated entities. We qualify.
You can engage us directly under Exemption 17
Appendix A, Exemption 17 of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules lets an entity directly engage an SME for procurements valued below $500,000 including GST, provided value for money can be demonstrated. No open approach to market is required, and no panel membership is needed.
We contract on the Commonwealth Contracting Suite
Use of the Commonwealth Contracting Suite is mandated for procurements under $200,000. We work to it as standard, which keeps the contracting overhead proportionate to engagements of this size.
Scoped to close before the deadline, not after it
Engagements are fixed in scope and sequenced so the artefacts your Accountable Official needs exist before the requirement bites — rather than a programme that is still running when the date passes.
Before applying Exemption 17: where the Indigenous Procurement Policy’s Mandatory Set Aside applies — procurements delivered in remote Australia, and other procurements wholly delivered in Australia valued between $80,000 and $200,000 including GST — an Indigenous business must first be given the opportunity to demonstrate value for money.
This page describes the procurement rules as published by the Department of Finance and is provided as a convenience, not as procurement advice. Your delegate remains responsible for the procurement decision and for demonstrating value for money.