COBOL dev won .Net hackathon with help from AI – and their CIO loves it
Australia Taxation Office sees footling with Copilot as a way to develop ‘muscles’ for real AI work
Mark Sawade, the CIO of Australia's taxation office (ATO), is allowing administrative staff to utilize Microsoft's Copilot for routine tasks with the aim of enhancing their skills and fostering ideas that could eventually enhance the agency's core services. Speaking at Gartner's annual IT Symposium, Sawade emphasized the importance of getting AI into the hands of as many workers as possible to build muscle.
The ATO has a decade-long history of implementing machine learning and deep analytics for fraud detection, but Sawade has decided to keep generative or agentic AI out of these core activities. Instead, he hopes that employing Copilot will boost AI literacy and potentially lead to AI-driven enhancements in the agency's processes.
Sawade expressed confidence in his developer team, citing an internal hackathon where a COBOL developer won, despite having no experience with C# or .Net framework, demonstrating the power of generative AI in transcending specific domains. The ATO aims to deliver improvements similar to the reduced time taken to complete paper-based tax returns (from six hours to 12 minutes) and envisions personal agents to assist taxpayers in remembering and filing their annual returns.
However, Sawade acknowledged the need to address hurdles like token costs before fully embracing AI. He advised that success with AI projects requires having clear goals and working backwards to increase automation.
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