§28 · Lane 7 — Australian Regulatory Primary Instruments
NSW Artificial Intelligence Strategy the policy frame above the operational framework
NSW Government (2020) · NSW AI Strategy
Bibliographic data
- Title
- NSW Artificial Intelligence Strategy (2020) / Strategy refresh
- Authors / Issuing body
- NSW Department of Customer Service (Digital NSW)
- Venue / Publisher
- NSW Government
- Year
- 2020
- Designation
- Guidance
- Licence
- Refer to publisher for full licence terms.
How to cite
NSW Government (2020). NSW Artificial Intelligence Strategy (2020) / Strategy refresh. NSW Government. https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/policy/artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-strategy.
The NSW Government's strategic policy frame for AI development and deployment by NSW Government agencies. Built around five themes — building public trust, digital uplift, building data capability, procurement, and innovation and collaboration. The direction limb of the four-part NSW AI framework, sitting above the operational NSW AI Assessment Framework and the binding NSW AI Operational Policy.
Why it matters for NETEVO
The NSW Government's strategic policy frame for AI development and deployment by NSW Government agencies — the policy-level companion to the NSW AI Assurance / Assessment Framework. Read together, the two instruments supply both the strategic frame (why NSW Government uses AI) and the operational template (how NSW Government assesses AI projects).
Five themes, each with an established counterpart. The strategy is built around public trust, digital uplift, data capability, procurement, and innovation and collaboration. Each theme connects to instruments elsewhere in the AI governance landscape: public trust pairs with ISO/IEC 38507 governance and the AICD/HTI eight elements of board-level AI governance; digital uplift is the theme the Law-to-Code Methodology addresses in practice; data capability pairs with ISO/IEC 22989 and the OAIC training-data guidance; procurement pairs with the OAIC procurement guidance; and innovation and collaboration sits within the lineage of the AI standards stack.
The state-government ethics overlay has been retired. The strategy formerly underwrote the NSW AI Ethics Policy, released in 2020, which set the ethics principles NSW Government agencies were required to apply. That policy is now replaced. The NSW AI Operational Policy, mandated by Circular DCS-2026-02 from 30 July 2026, substitutes Australia's AI Ethics Principles 2019 in its place — which Digital NSW frames as aligning NSW with a nationally consistent ethics approach. The practical effect is that the NSW-specific ethics overlay collapses into the national eight principles, while the NSW-specific procurement and assurance requirements move into the Operational Policy and the AI Assessment Framework rather than sitting in a separate ethics instrument.
Direction, not obligation. DCS-2026-02 records that no changes were made to the AI Strategy in the July 2026 amendment. The Strategy remains the direction limb of the four-part NSW framework — strategy, operational policy, review committee, assessment framework — and on its own it describes intent rather than any binding requirement. For the obligation as well as the intent, read it alongside the NSW AI Operational Policy.
Where NETEVO applies this
- AI Governance in ANZ Whitepaper — state-government policy framing
- Listed Leaders ICP — NSW Government suppliers operate against this strategy
Who acts on this
Reading this usually means something has forced the question — a listing, an audit finding, a procurement questionnaire, a regulator's letter. The role pages below set out what NETEVO does about it, including where we would tell you not to engage.