CDAO Perth schedule

During this 10-minute networking session, the aim of the game is to go and meet three people you don't already know. Have fun!

• Leveraging drone imagery, satellite data, and 200+ live weather stations to create unified data ecosystems.
• Challenges in aggregating fragmented environmental and agricultural datasets.
• The role of open data in enabling collaboration and accessibility (government-led initiatives.

As AI adoption scales, usage fragments across dozens of tools making it difficult to identify total cost of ownership. This talk shares the experiences in building a comprehensive AI cost monitoring application complete with budget tiering for individuals and departments. Attendees will leave with a reference architecture, pitfalls in certain AI tools and governance considerations.

Despite growing investment in AI and analytics, many organisations still struggle with fragmented data ownership, inconsistent quality, and siloed systems that limit business impact. This session explores how data leaders can build trusted, scalable foundations that enable smarter decisions, stronger governance, and enterprise-wide AI readiness.

• Establish clear data ownership and enterprise-wide governance to create trusted, accountable data foundations.
• Improve data quality and interoperability across agencies, systems, and business functions.
• Build organisation-wide data literacy and stewardship to drive adoption and lasting cultural change.
• Scale self-service analytics and AI readiness with accessible, governed, and trusted data platforms.

Moderator:

Vaibhav Agrawal
AI Innovation Manager
Insurance Commission of Western Australia

Speakers:

Ivy Isack
Manager - Governance, Analysis and Improvement
Fortescue 

Aqif Mukhtar
Manager - Data Analytics
Road Safety Commission

Dr Vahid Golkar
Data & Analytics Manager
Topdrill

In the race to scale AI, how can organizations move fast enough to unlock innovation while putting the right guardrails in place to build trust and minimise risk?

This session explores how leaders can build scalable frameworks that democratise innovation, establish trusted guardrails, and enable employees to generate measurable business value with confidence. Attendees will learn how to track what is and isn’t working, sustain engagement, encourage experimentation, and embed accountability into AI initiatives, creating a foundation for trusted innovation that delivers lasting impact across the enterprise.

Most organisations have moved beyond asking whether they should invest in AI. The challenge now is how to move from isolated experiments to AI that can reason, decide and act safely inside core business processes.
The barrier is no longer the model alone.

Fragmented systems, inconsistent data, missing business context, static governance and uncontrolled AI consumption all undermine trust, increase cost and prevent value at scale. In this session, Mitch Howard, Solution Engineer at Boomi, explores the infrastructure required to turn AI into governed action.  Drawing on new APAC research and real-world examples, he will examine how organisations can connect and activate trusted data, ground agents in business context, govern access and behaviour, and combine deterministic automation with agentic workflows to deliver measurable outcomes.

Attendees will learn why AI readiness is only the starting point—and how data, context, integration and control must work together to move AI from insight to enterprise action.

Most organisations don't discover their data isn't AI-ready until it's too late. Join Joseph Minervini as he cuts through the hype to share what it actually takes to build a foundation that works - exploring why trusted, governed data isn't just a technical requirement, but the difference between AI ambition and AI outcomes. 

Data leaders face constant pressure to move faster while avoiding costly missteps. Decisions to buy, build or partner shape not just delivery speed, but long‑term flexibility, risk and credibility. How do you make these calls in practice, separate substance from vendor noise, and structure partnerships that support evolving business needs?

Speakers:
Andy Maher
Manager – Digital & Data
IGO Ltd.

Nikhil Matthew
AI & Enablement Lead
Edith Cowan University

• Why governance without continuous verification is faith, not control — and where the gap opens.
• How ANZ regulation (CPS 230, BCBS 239) and agentic AI have turned data quality into a board-level, evidence-based obligation.
• A practical, technology-agnostic framework for continuous data integrity across the data lifecycle.
  

Conventional wisdom says governance and speed pull in opposite directions. This session makes the opposite case: that proactive governance is one of the most powerful accelerators of AI innovation available to an organisation. We’ll explore how the right mindsets, scalable architectures, and practical guardrails work together to let teams experiment boldly and ship responsibly — at pace. Attendees will leave with a practical playbook for building data and AI capability that keeps up with fast-moving technology and market expectations, without trading away trust, control, or compliance.

• Why AI adoption does not automatically translate into enterprise scale.
• The relationship between Effective Outcomes and the Cost of Trust.
• How trusted knowledge, engineered controls and designed supervision enable safe delegation.
• Why delegation capability and work redesign are essential to scaling intelligence.
• Using outcome evidence to calibrate delegation, balancing innovation, risk and value realization.

• How ICWA developed and operationalised its AI Strategy.
• Establishing governance, risk and assurance foundations for responsible AI.
• Designing an MLOps architecture and operating model to support sustainable AI delivery.
• Practical experiences from delivering AI initiatives across Copilot, intelligent automation and machine learning use cases.
• Lessons learned, challenges encountered and our roadmap for scaling AI capability across the organisation.

Andrew Lillico
Head of Data Strategy
Insurance Commission of Western Australia

Vaibhav Agrawal
AI Innovation Manager
Insurance Commission of Western Australia 

• Most friction comes from weak data foundations, not from governance itself.
• Build controls into the pipeline instead of adding gates after it.
• Make ownership explicit.
• Resolve the risk-versus-access tension with guided self-service.
• Trust is what lets you accelerate.

• How can AI models be trained and tuned to identify subtle data quality issues and drift before they impact downstream use?
• What’s the right balance between automated detection and human oversight in managing data reliability?
• How do you integrate real-time monitoring into existing data pipelines without introducing latency or complexity?

This session explores how agentic AI systems, including autonomous, multi-agent, and LLM-based agents, are transforming document lifecycle management through automated reviews, compliance checking, and feedback generation. Matt will share how Wood is combining RAG, Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), semantic document comparison, and human-in-the-loop validation to streamline engineering documentation and project handover processes. The approach has delivered significant business value, including 30-40% faster document reviews, 30-45% less rework, up to 50% fewer quality deviations, and millions of dollars in cost savings. 

Many Perth organisations have reached a practical hiring ceiling due to budget pressure and talent scarcity. The focus has shifted from adding people to changing how data teams operate and prioritise.

• Why does hiring top technical talent individually not guarantee
  a high-performing team?
• Evaluate where AI tools genuinely augment teams versus add complexity
• How do you foster collaboration and proactivity in newly formed data teams?
• What hiring and retention strategies help turn strong individuals into a cohesive unit that delivers value?

Speakers:
Douglas Robertson Director & Principal Consultant DR Analytics Recruitment

Speakers:

Sandhya Krishnan
GM, Organisational Solutions, People Tech & Analytics
RAC WA

Ross Campbell
Manager - Data Analytics & Privacy Officer

Tas Mitaros
Data & Business Intelligence Lead
Duratec

Get ready to challenge assumptions, defend your stance, and shift perspectives.
In this high-energy, interactive debate panel, senior data leaders won’t just share insights. With live audience polling and daring prompts, this session invites attendees to vote, question, and engage in real-time. Expect lively discussions, surprising consensus, and a candid look at the questions shaping the future of data leadership in WA.

• How can CDAOs scale AI responsibly while ensuring governance and compliance keep pace?
• What strategies build trust across the business, so AI adoption is embraced,
  not resisted?
• How do leaders balance the urgency for AI-driven growth with the risks of misalignment or misuse?

Speakers:

Matthew Curnow
Head of Digital Strategy, Data Management & AI
Wood

Harpreet Khalsa
Chief Data Officer
Edith Cowan University

Krista Bell
Director – Data & Information Governance
Curtin University