Oversight

Exempt by Design: The AI Governance Gap in the National Intelligence Community

It is fair to assume the agencies wielding AI on the most consequential decisions carry the tightest rules governing it; in Australia, for the national intelligence community, that assumption is exactly backwards. The mandatory framework for government AI, the Digital Transformation Agency's policy now at v2.0 with a mandatory use-case register, exempts the Defence portfolio and the national intelligence community (Digital Transformation Agency, 2025). The National AI Plan shelved the proposed mandatory high-risk guardrails and stood up an AI Safety Institute instead (Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2025). What is left for the community is point-in-time authorisation under the Protective Security Policy Framework and an oversight office that has appointed a single Chief AI Officer (Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, 2025).