The AI Brief
AI, explained for Australian local government.
AI is moving fast — and most of what is written about it is written for Silicon Valley or Canberra, not for the people running Australia's councils and utilities. The AI Brief tracks what matters globally and translates it for the local level: your workforce, your community, your service desk.
The essays, research and announcements shaping AI globally — read so you don't have to, and summarised in plain English.
Every piece is put in context for Australian councils and utilities — policy, workforce, community and service delivery.
Practical next steps for executive teams: what to put on the risk register, what to pilot, and what to watch.
The 16 Questions Every Council AI Deployment Now Faces
Inside NSW's AI Assessment Framework — and what it asks of the tools you buy
NSW's redesigned AI Assessment Framework turns responsible AI into a 16-question risk assessment every deployment must pass. What it asks, why a phone assistant rates medium-to-high, and how to tell a vendor is built to clear it.
The AI Exponential Is Coming to Your Council Chamber
Anthropic's CEO argues AI is improving faster than policy institutions can adapt. Three of his five policy priorities — jobs, data centres, and government's own use of AI — run straight through Australian council chambers. Here's the essay, unpacked for local government.
109 AI Tools, 11% With a Strategy: The Audit Every Council Should Read
NSW councils are adopting AI far faster than they are governing it, the Audit Office found — 109 tools in use, one in ten councils keeping count. With the 30 June deadline weeks away, here is what good looks like, in any state.
What Millions of AI Conversations Reveal About Where AI Actually Works
The largest dataset of real-world AI use ever published says business AI lives in customer service — payments and billing especially — and that the learning curve compounds. Both findings point straight at the council contact centre.
Canberra Has an AI Plan. Here's the Council-Sized Version.
Australia's National AI Plan barely mentions councils — but its three pillars all land locally: data centres seeking approval, adoption funding to chase, and assurance standards converging on local government. The council-sized reading.
New briefs, as they land
Follow Cassie AI on LinkedIn — every new edition of The AI Brief is announced there first, alongside event news and Insights episodes.