Weekly, November  |  12:30 PM AEDT, Sydney   |   Webinar

Join Akkodis’ four-part webinar series this November to discover how AI can help councils improve efficiency, enhance services and deliver greater community value. Learn from experts and case studies to identify opportunities and navigate AI adoption with confidence.

Presenter: Sandy Chalasani, Industry CTO, Akkodis

A myth-busting opening session that cuts through the AI hype and grounds council leaders in what drives AI success. Framed around the five Akkodis AI success measures — People, Process, Governance, Technology and Change — the session gives councils an honest, practical view of what it takes to adopt AI safely and sustainably.

Fact from fiction here includes governance reality, not capability alone, given the records, privacy and community trust obligations councils carry.

The five things, mapped to the success measures: 

• Fiction: AI will replace staff and professional judgement. Fact: it supports decisions, and accountability stays with people. (People)
• Fiction: adopting AI means buying new AI tools. Fact: most early value comes from tools councils already license. (Process) 
• Fiction: the main risk is the model. Fact: the main risk is the data, and how AI is governed once it acts. (Governance) 
• Fiction: AI adoption is a technology project. Fact: it succeeds or fails on people, process and change. (Technology)
• Fiction: Councils should wait until the rules settle. Fact: the safe path is to start small with governance in place. (Change) 

Date: 4 November  | 12:30 PM, AEDT Sydney

Presenter: Rishona Elijah, Copilot Specialist, Akkodis

A hands-on, live demonstration of Microsoft 365 Copilot as an everyday assistant for council teams. This session shows Copilot at work on real council tasks, drafting reports and briefing notes, summarising community submissions at scale, and supporting customer service and frontline staff, always with a human in control. 

Examples include drafting agendas and minutes, and triaging customer requests, with the work staying inside the council’s own Microsoft tenant so resident data is not exposed to external systems. 

Councils will walk away with:

• A practical view of Copilot in real council workflows, not slideware
• Ready-to-use ideas for reducing administrative load across teams
• How to adopt Copilot safely, protecting resident data and decision quality 
• A clear view of what not to use it for yet, such as unreviewed decisions affecting residents or sensitive records without the right controls 
• Inspiration to identify their own high-value, low-risk use cases 

Date: 10 November  | 12:30 PM, AEDT Sydney

Presenter: Deon Jacobs, Data and AI Solutions Lead, Akkodis

AI is only as good as the data that feeds it. This closing session explains why data is the oxygen for AI, helps councils assess their data capability and readiness, and looks ahead to what comes after Copilot — the move to agentic AI that can act, not just assist. When AI acts rather than assists, accountability stays with the council, and the council needs to be able to show what the system did and why. That is why data and governance are the foundations for this next step. 

Councils will walk away with: 

• Why good data matters more than the AI tool you pick
• A quick way to check how ready your data is
• What comes after Copilot: AI that takes action, and why the council still has to answer for it
• The first steps to take on your data

Date: 19 November  | 12:30 PM, AEDT Sydney

Presenter: Peter Henry, Alliance Manager Community Safety & Amenity, City of Perth

Presenter: Wayne Goudie, AI and Engineering Lead, City of Gold Coast

A practical close to the November blitz, featuring councils sharing innovative projects they are running. The session will focus on the problem each council set out to solve, the approach taken, what has been learned, and the outcomes or early value being created. It gives peers credible examples of what is possible and helps participating councils identify ideas they can adapt in their own environment.

Councils will walk away with:

• Peer examples of innovative council projects already underway
• Practical lessons from councils moving from idea to implementation
• Ideas that can be adapted to their own service, workforce and community priorities 

Date: 24 November  | 12:30 PM, AEDT Sydney

Sandy Chalasani

Rishona Elijah

Deon Jacobs

Wayne Goudie

Peter Henry

Industry CTO

ANZ Public sector

Akkodis

Copilot Specialist

Akkodis

Alliance Manager Community Safety & Amenity, City of Perth

Data and AI Solutions Lead

Akkodis

AI and Engineering Lead,

City of Gold Coast

© 2026 Akkodis. All rights reserved

 At Akkodis, we take your privacy seriously. Any personal information you provide to us will be handled in accordance with our privacy policy. We are committed to protecting your data and using it only for the intended purposes. For more information, please refer to our privacy policy.