ATO seeking AI coding assistant tool

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is looking to integrate AI coding assistant tools into the organisation's development workflow, releasing a tender to acquire an AI Coding Assistant Tool to assist the ATO developers with more efficient code development.

This is intended to solve common programming issues to give developers more time to focus on higher value work, such as test case planning, security controls for application development and maintain up to date technologies for all developers.

The ATO currently has a complex, multi technology IT delivery environment, supporting over 800 core developers, spanning multiple technologies.

Mandatory requirements for the solution include seamless integration with existing development technologies, including Visual Studio 2019, 2022 and Visual Studio Code; an allowance for real-time high-volume simultaneous usage, enabling all defined user types to access their user account and perform all allowable functions in real-time; and the ability to interface with products in ATO's Software Development Lifecycle including, Azure DevOps Services Git code repositories.

The solution must have guardrails that protect the ATO’s reputation by reducing the risk of harmful material being input or output from foundation models. A supplier must provide evidence of controls within large language model curation processes to reduce the risk of malicious code suggestion.

The solution must have proven evidence of incorporating Assistive AI driven technology to increase the productivity of developers within an Enterprise environment. The ATO’s internal developer cohort consists of over 500 active developers who work within a complex, multi technology application stack.

The solution must be hosted in a secure ATO hosted environment (on-premises, Azure, or AWS) allowing data, to be encrypted at rest and in-transit to comply with ATO's data privacy policies and APS legislative requirements; be hosted within an Australian region; the large language model must not be stored offshore; and the solution must be restricted to be utilised only by onshore Australian access points.

The proposed contract period is three years.

The tender will close at 12 Sep September 2025 at 12:00 pm ACT Local Time. 

Other tenders released by the ATO in 2025 include requests for a new Project Portfolio Management solution, a secure file sharing solution and a sophisticated AI system to detect and prevent fraud across its digital services in real-time.