Use AI to transform bureaucratic jargon into plain English

The Style Manual is a crucial resource designed to ensure consistency and clarity in written content across the Australian Government. It provides comprehensive guidance about writing for the government, including grammar, punctuation, tone and inclusive language. The Style Manual helps improve the quality of government writing, making it more accessible and user-friendly.

This challenge focuses on operationalising and expanding the application of the Style Manual through AI tools. We want you to explore innovative ways to improve the accuracy, efficiency and inclusivity of government content. By leveraging AI, we can:

• centre government communication around the needs of people
• adhere to Australian style, spelling and conventions
• make content accessible to diverse audiences.

We will be looking for entries that showcase creative ways to apply AI to create clear, compelling communication for different audiences.

Opportunities to explore:

1. Australian English for Australians
   • Most large language models have been trained on internet corpus, which mostly uses US English spelling and conventions. How do we ensure that AI tools used in government reliably recognise and apply Australian English spelling, grammar and style guidelines?
2. Accuracy of content
   • How can we use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to ensure that AI-generated content is based on reliable sources and does not introduce errors or misinformation? This involves integrating AI with expert information sources to prevent hallucinations and make sure that content stays authoritative.
3. Accessibility for inclusion
   • Ensuring that content is inclusive and accessible to all users is crucial for effective communication. How can we incorporate AI accessibility features to make government content more accessible to people with disabilities? This could include generating:
   • content that is readable by screen readers
   • captions
   • transcripts.
4. Agentic flows
   • How can we design agentic flows to train multiple small models that can handle different aspects of the Style Manual? For example, punctuation, tone, inclusive language and so on? This approach could allow for specialised AI agents to focus on specific tasks, improving overall efficiency and effectiveness.

We expect participants to showcase diverse and creative AI-driven solutions that operationalise and expand the application of the Style Manual.

Teams might showcase the ability to:

• accurately apply Style Manual guidance, including referencing relevant sections of the Style Manual in feedback to users
• enhance content accessibility
• cater to diverse personas such as CALD communities, regional populations and people with varying levels of literacy.

We encourage creativity and innovation, with a focus on real-world applicability and the potential to significantly improve government communication. We are looking for the potential to integrate solutions into existing workflows and provide measurable benefits to the:

• Australian Government
• people who use Australian Government content.

Ideally, solutions should:

• be capable of being incorporated into existing software (such as word processors, slides and spreadsheets)
• help users to rewrite content into plain language
• suggest inclusive language options
• correct style, grammar and punctuation errors
• provide users with feedback on their document so they can see how it has been improved and learn for next time.

The Australian Public Service (APS) has a legal obligation to provide information that’s accessible to everyone. This includes providing information in a way that is respectful, understandable and usable for everyone.


External Links
https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/


Image Credit: © Commonwealth of Australia 2024