COBOL dev won .Net hackathon with help from AI – and their CIO loves it – The Register
TOPICS
AI AND ML
Australia Taxation Office sees footling with Copilot as a way to develop ‘muscles’ for real AI work
The CIO of Australia’s taxation office (ATO) is letting administrative staff use Microsoft’s Copilot for everyday activities, in the hope it pays off by helping them to develop skills, and ideas, that eventually improve its core services.
“We are getting AI into the hands of as many workers as possible to build the muscle,” ATO CIO Mark Sawade said at analyst firm Gartner’s annual IT Symposium on Monday.
The CIO said the ATO is already familiar with AI.
“We have been doing forms of machine learning and deep analytics for fraud for the better part of a decade,” he said, mentioning fraud detection as one application for the tech. For now, he’s not letting generative or agentic AI near those processes or other core activities.
“We are using Copilot to just speed up some everyday activities,” the CIO added, saying he hopes that improves AI literacy and perhaps develops skills that lead to AI-powered improvements to core processes.
Sawade said he doesn’t expect allowing admin staff to work with Copilot will improve efficiency or produce obvious return on investment. Instead, he hopes to develop ROE – “return on employee.”
“You will develop the muscle you need to learn how to improve business processes,” he said.
The ATO’s developer team gives him confidence this strategy can work.
The CIO said the ATO operates many technology platforms of different vintages, from mainframe to Java, and recently staged an internal hackathon during which a COBOL developer emerged triumphant after using GitHub Copilot.
“He had never coded a line of C# or anything in the .Net framework in his life,” Sawade said. “That showed us the ability to transcend some of the detail, how someone who understands core concepts can use generative AI to work in a domain they have never looked at before is really powerful.”
Sawade’s ambitions for AI are considerable. He pointed to the fact that the paper-based tax return forms Australia used in the 1990s took six hours to complete, compared to the 12 minutes taxpayers now spend using the ATO’s app and online service. He hopes AI can help the ATO to deliver similar improvements, especially for businesses whose tax affairs are more complex.
He also thought-bubbled personal agents that remind taxpayers that it’s time to file an annual return and interact with other agents to prepare it.
“We are a long way from that, with identity the main hurdle,” he said.
The CIO is in no rush to jump that hurdle.
“Things that have bitten some organizations, like token costs, we can learn from that without being far behind,” he said.
Whatever the ATO decides to do with AI, Sawade suggested it will only succeed if projects have goals.
“Be really clear on the outcomes, and then work backwards to increase automation,” he advised. ®
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This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
AI AND ML
Australia Taxation Office sees footling with Copilot as a way to develop ‘muscles’ for real AI work
The CIO of Australia’s taxation office (ATO) is letting administrative staff use Microsoft’s Copilot for everyday activities, in the hope it pays off by helping them to develop skills, and ideas, that eventually improve its core services.
“We are getting AI into the hands of as many workers as possible to build the muscle,” ATO CIO Mark Sawade said at analyst firm Gartner’s annual IT Symposium on Monday.
The CIO said the ATO is already familiar with AI.
“We have been doing forms of machine learning and deep analytics for fraud for the better part of a decade,” he said, mentioning fraud detection as one application for the tech. For now, he’s not letting generative or agentic AI near those processes or other core activities.
“We are using Copilot to just speed up some everyday activities,” the CIO added, saying he hopes that improves AI literacy and perhaps develops skills that lead to AI-powered improvements to core processes.
Sawade said he doesn’t expect allowing admin staff to work with Copilot will improve efficiency or produce obvious return on investment. Instead, he hopes to develop ROE – “return on employee.”
“You will develop the muscle you need to learn how to improve business processes,” he said.
The ATO’s developer team gives him confidence this strategy can work.
The CIO said the ATO operates many technology platforms of different vintages, from mainframe to Java, and recently staged an internal hackathon during which a COBOL developer emerged triumphant after using GitHub Copilot.
“He had never coded a line of C# or anything in the .Net framework in his life,” Sawade said. “That showed us the ability to transcend some of the detail, how someone who understands core concepts can use generative AI to work in a domain they have never looked at before is really powerful.”
Sawade’s ambitions for AI are considerable. He pointed to the fact that the paper-based tax return forms Australia used in the 1990s took six hours to complete, compared to the 12 minutes taxpayers now spend using the ATO’s app and online service. He hopes AI can help the ATO to deliver similar improvements, especially for businesses whose tax affairs are more complex.
He also thought-bubbled personal agents that remind taxpayers that it’s time to file an annual return and interact with other agents to prepare it.
“We are a long way from that, with identity the main hurdle,” he said.
The CIO is in no rush to jump that hurdle.
“Things that have bitten some organizations, like token costs, we can learn from that without being far behind,” he said.
Whatever the ATO decides to do with AI, Sawade suggested it will only succeed if projects have goals.
“Be really clear on the outcomes, and then work backwards to increase automation,” he advised. ®
Australia Taxation Office sees footling with Copilot as a way to develop ‘muscles’ for real AI work
Redmond outlines ‘aspirational’ goals for model behavior, but gives itself a pass if it gets things wrong
PARTNER CONTENT: Pairs block and adjacent file workloads with independent scaling of performance and capacity
Part of a ‘massive 48-hour malvertising blitz’ targeting macOS and Windows machines with malware
Patchy compliance is an argument for stronger enforcement, not abandoning the project
Congratulations on helping Larry Ellison’s AI cloud boom. Now please pack your bags and go
on-prem
Tax breaks, water, noise, decommissioning – report tells local officials what to nail down before signing
LEGAL
Even if regulators did somehow unwind the $20B deal, there’s a growing list of alternatives ready to take Groq’s place, no merger required
SECURITY
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Privacy is surveillance
SYSTEMS
AI infrastructure startup joins Qualcomm, Arm, Marvell, Amazon, Fujitsu, and MediaTek as NVLink true believers
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Claude’s Felony Bench rap sheet is now as long as OpenAI’s
Security
PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks ‘Why Do We Have Your Information?’ And more!
Security
PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more
Black Hat and DEF CON
Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included
Security
Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified
Malware Month
On the plus side, infosec’s a good bet for a long, stable career
Acquisition gives open source CSS framework ‘a stable long-term home’
Swiss Army sticks a knife in American cloud apps with its own FOSS push
Debian and Xfce – solid, sensible choices – with a pretty skin
The Ubuntu Pastebin went in June, IRC gets demoted next
The FOSS tool for audio editing has a fresh coat of paint, and new features to boot
A real alternative to running some kind of FOSS Unix clone
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Contact us
Advertise with us
Who we are
Newsletter
The Next Platform
DevClass
Blocks and Files
Situation Publishing
Cookies Policy
Privacy Policy
Ts & Cs
Do not share my personal information
Your Consent Options
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998-2026.
source
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
