§27 · Lane 7 — Australian Regulatory Primary Instruments
NSW AI Assurance / Assessment Framework the operational template for NSW Government suppliers
NSW Government (2022, renamed 2024) · NSW AIAF
Bibliographic data
- Title
- NSW Government AI Assurance Framework (March 2022) / NSW AI Assessment Framework (1 July 2024 update)
- Authors / Issuing body
- NSW Department of Customer Service (Digital NSW)
- Venue / Publisher
- NSW Government
- Year
- 2022
- Designation
- Guidance
- Licence
- Stable URL — refer to publisher for full licence terms.
How to cite
NSW Government (2022, renamed 2024). NSW Government AI Assurance Framework (March 2022) / NSW AI Assessment Framework (1 July 2024 update). NSW Government. https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/policy/artificial-intelligence/ai-governance-assurance-and-frameworks/nsw-ai-assessment-framework.
The NSW state-government framework for assessing AI risk in agency projects. Originally issued March 2022 as the AI Assurance Framework; renamed and substantially updated 1 July 2024 as the AI Assessment Framework now distributed as an Excel workbook integrated with the NSW Digital Assurance Framework. The most operationally detailed AU state-government AI framework.
Why it matters for NETEVO
The NSW AI Assurance Framework — first issued in March 2022, renamed the AI Assessment Framework on 1 July 2024, and now distributed as an Excel workbook integrated into the NSW Digital Assurance Framework — is the most workflow-detailed Australian state-government AI framework in circulation. Read alongside ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO/IEC 42005, it demonstrates that a single well-constructed assessment template can serve several regulatory regimes at once.
Operational template, not aspirational guidance. The framework ships as a project-level question bank with risk-rating matrices and executive sign-off fields. For any organisation supplying AI into the NSW Government supply chain, the workbook is the concrete statement of what the assurance process expects to see — precisely the kind of operational template that the Law-to-Code Methodology translates into engineered controls.
Binding via DCS-2024-04. The 2024 Use of Artificial Intelligence by NSW Government Agencies policy, made under section 4(2)(c) of the Government Sector Employment Act 2013 (NSW), binds NSW Government agencies and most NSW Government suppliers through grant and contract conditions. The 2024 framework update also broadens scope to address generative AI and aligns with the Commonwealth National Framework for the Assurance of AI in Government and the EU AI Act, so a single set of assessment outputs can be carried across to federal and international comparator regimes.
NSW AI Review Committee operational. NSW now runs a published external-expert AI Review Committee that takes referrals of high and critical risk assessment outputs via the NSW Office for AI. The committee issues advisory recommendations only; agencies retain decision-making authority. Two consequences follow: high and critical risk assessments are now prepared in the knowledge that they may face external expert scrutiny, and the committee's composition — drawn heavily from the UTS Human Technology Institute, the Gradient Institute, and the federal AI Expert Group — indicates where Australian AI assurance practice is consolidating.
Where NETEVO applies this
- AI Governance in ANZ Whitepaper — load-bearing — state-government section