The Department of Finance has materially expanded the number of AI models that can be sourced through its whole-of-government service GovAI.
The service has notably added the Gemma family of models from Google, along with Nemotron from Nvidia and the Palmyra models developed by Writer, iTnews can reveal.
Google DeepMind describes Gemma as “a collection of lightweight, open models built from the same technology that powers our Gemini models.”
Nemotron, meanwhile, is touted by Nvidia as being good “for building specialised AI agents”, while Writer describes its Palmyra LLMs as “the only models trained with business writing and marketing data as their focus.”
The three new model families join an existing selection of models from OpenAI (GPT and Whisper), Anthropic (Claude) and Mistral (Devstral, Mistral AI and Voxstral).
Operated by the Department of Finance, GovAI is offered as both a chat-based service to public service staff directly, and as a secure API gateway to approved models.
The creation of GovAI was first revealed by iTnews in mid-2025.
The chat service is currently in a beta trial with Australian Public Service (APS) staff.
All models used by the chat service must be hosted onshore with data processing also only taking place within Australia.
Finance has, however, indicated that it is open to the use of offshore models via its API service, which is known as the “model brokerage service”.
The brokerage service is more targeted at technical and development teams seeking to build their own applications or to incorporate AI into existing agency systems.
“For models accessed via the model brokerage service, agencies may request access to
additional models, including offshore-hosted models, only where risk assessments have been completed and controls applied,” the department said.
“Onshore Australian-hosted models remain the default, and offshore use is treated as an exception subject to governance, classification limits and security requirements.
“Agencies are responsible for their use of any models obtained through the model brokerage service and are required to implement safeguards and controls appropriate for their operating environment.”
