The NSW government is to start using artificial intelligence to speed up assessments of state significant developments, which include data centres and housing developments.
The Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure went to tender on September 1 for a “ready to use” solution that can assist with tasks such as reading planning documents and matching data against local planning rules and regulations.
The technology will be implemented into the state significant development application process and integrated with the NSW Planning Portal via APIs starting from October.
According to tender documents, the government expects the solution will be fully operational by January 30 next year.
“This will add an important tool to the suite of tools available to planners as they assess larger and more complex proposals,” Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Paul Scully said in a statement.
“This is about using technology to do more of the heavy lifting in the planning system while leaving the final decision to a human decision maker.”
State significant developments are proposals for large or complex projects that are assessed by the state government, rather than local councils, using what it calls a “rapid assessment framework”.
Proposals that are either over a certain size, located in a sensitive environmental area or will exceed a specific capital investment value are considered to qualify as a state significant development.
Despite the fast-track framework, however, the average assessment takes around eight-and-a-half months, with three months spent “in government hands”, according to DPHI’s announcement.
“By deploying AI across these processes, the government expects to significantly reduce this timeframe while maintaining human oversight with the final decision required to be made by a person,” the department said in a statement.
At its core, the AI tool will assess submitted information against the state significant development planning criteria, suggesting draft reports, assessment outcomes and templates for planners.
In a similar vein to the Australian Taxation Office, one of NSW Planning’s key requirements is what it calls “document intelligence” – essentially, the ability to ingest complex planning documents and extract structured data.
To enable this, the NSW government is seeking a solution that incorporates natural language processing, alongside optical character recognition that can read, interpret and process information from scanned documents and images.
The tool is expected to highlight missing or non-compliant data in applications; check the application against relevant policy and legal precedents and subsequently recommend application outcomes based on previous developments.
It will also assist with spatial assessment by integrating with the department’s geographic information system layers.
Predictive analytics to monitor pipeline, delays and compliance trends, as well as predict hurdles such as bottlenecks and policy changes, will also be used for future decision-making.
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