GovTech Review

Splunk AI features are now available on-premises with the release of Cisco AI POD for Splunk, the newest addition to Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA. As AI agents take on more of the work inside the enterprise, the biggest barrier to adoption isn’t capability — it’s confidence. Customers need to trust that AI is secure, governed and worth the cost before they let it run at scale.

The NSW Government has announced the completion of its Easy Read election commitment, making essential government information easier to understand with simplified language, large font sizes and images. The Easy Read initiative aims to be useful for the more than 150,000 people with intellectual disability in NSW, and also benefit people with low literacy and those whose first language is not English.

Gartner says it has identified the top technology trends in government. The trends reflect growing pressure on public sector leaders to modernise operations, strengthen cyber resilience, govern AI at scale and meet rising citizen expectations amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Speaking at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo on the Gold Coast on 14 September, Dean Lacheca, VP Analyst at Gartner, said, “Government CIOs are operating in one of the most disruptive periods in recent memory.

Debate on the efficacy and limitations of the Essential Eight framework has been brewing for years. While it established a common language and benchmark for cybersecurity maturity across federal government, it has been clear for some time that this baseline is not translating into real-world resilience. The Australian Signals Directorate’s shift to a broader ‘Essentials’ model is a positive step in the right direction if agencies prioritise cybersecurity outcomes over checklist compliance.

Australian companies Citadel Edge and Cyber Automation have announced a strategic partnership that they say is to help organisations across Australia and New Zealand strengthen cyber resilience in the face of Frontier AI-enabled attacks, ransomware, fast-moving vulnerabilities, supply-chain exposure and escalating data breach risk.

Atturra By David Moores, Executive General Manager – Business Applications, Atturra Tuesday, 08 September, 2026 Australian local councils are under growing pressure to rethink how they operate as they face rising community expectations and constrained revenue growth. The sector’s recent push for the federal government to allocate 1% of total tax revenue to local government has highlighted the financial strain facing councils across the country.

UiPath By Ian Dempsey, Regional Vice President Public Sector ANZ, UiPath Monday, 07 September, 2026 For more than a decade, Australian government agencies have invested heavily in digitising public services across key areas such as licence renewals, electronic applications and access to information. While this has delivered enormous benefits for government and consumers alike, it does not necessarily transform what happens to the processes behind it.

New portable connectivity kits, nimble internet-enabled forward command vehicles and satellite vessel tracking are being rolled out by the NSW State Emergency Service (SES) to enhance community response during disasters, thanks to $7.7 million in funding from the state government. As explained by NSW SES Deputy Commissioner Damien Johnston, “Reliable communications are critical during disasters and when traditional networks fail, our teams must remain connected.

Tuesday, 01 September, 2026 The Australian Digital Health Agency (DHA) has announced the finalisation of an open market procurement to provide the application support and maintenance (ASM) services for digital health infrastructure, with Accenture Australia selected to provide the services for the next three years.

Objective Corporation has announced that North Sydney Council has selected Objective Build, becoming the first Australian council to implement the purpose-built platform. The company says Objective Build will help North Sydney Council strengthen the planning of service delivery amid ongoing reform and increasing development assessment complexity.