Faster progression from application to decision, with more consistency and transparency for proponents and regulators alike.
Company
The Department for Energy and Mining (DEM)
Industry
Government
“Authori has shown how AI can deliver real operational value by helping our team assess complex submissions more efficiently and confidently. It also demonstrates the broader potential of AI-enabled decision support to strengthen consistency, transparency and quality in regulatory decision making.”
Paul De Ionno, Executive Director, Regulation and Compliance, Department for Energy and Mining
The Challenge
The Department for Energy and Mining (DEM) is experiencing increasing pressure on its regulatory assessment function due to rising complexity of mining proposals, increasing demand and constrained specialist workforce capacity. Current processes are:
Requiring extensive manual review of large and complex documents (mining proposals, operating plans, technical appendices), often spanning hundreds or thousands of pages.
Resource-intensive, relying on Assessment Officers and subject matter experts (the Closure Team and Hydrogeologist) to manually locate, interpret and reconcile information across multiple sources.
Sequential and iterative, resulting in repeated Requests for I
Difficult to navigate for industry proponents, with extended approval pathways, inconsistent turnaround expectations and rework to achieve approval.nformation (RFIs), rework and extended processing timeframes.
The Solution
Realising the opportunity to improve productivity and increase State investment attractiveness, DEM secured funding through the South Australian Government’s Go2Gov Unmatched Pathways program to trial Authori by LoftyAI.
Designed through collaborative engagement with regulators, proponents and technical specialists in assessment and compliance, Authori delivers a fit-for-purpose AI assessment capability shaped by real regulatory practice and proponent needs.
Authori accelerates applications from lodgement to assessment-ready status, shifting capacity from administrative processing to higher-value technical assessment.
Application Quality Check: Checks every application against the relevant guidelines, flagging missing information and inconsistencies.
Consistent Regulatory Review: Applies standardised, evidence-based checks when assessing applications, strengthening decision consistency and quality.
Document Drafting: Optimises writing time while keeping expert judgement and accountability firmly with skilled staff.
Industry-Facing Portal: Applicants can self-check before they lodge, so fewer applications arrive incomplete.
Guideline Version Management: Add new guidelines or legislation in minutes, with no product changes required.
With deployment options providing self-hosted and closed-network artificial intelligence capabilities, Authori enables a secure, transparent, human-in-the-loop assessment model that improves consistency and regulatory confidence. It strengthens DEM’s existing workflows by integrating with the business systems already used for mining regulation.
Forecasted Benefits
Validity checks move from 2 weeks to 1 day, accelerating applications from lodgement to assessment-ready status.
Major assessment reports drop from 8 weeks to 1 week, freeing officers to focus on judgement, not drafting.
Incomplete applications reduce from 90% to 10%, slashing RFIs, rework and avoidable delays.
Administrative workload falls by 80% per application, shifting capacity from processing to higher-value technical assessment.
Approvals processing releases an estimated 1 to 2 FTE equivalent, unlocking capacity without growing headcount.
Earlier decisions bring forward royalties, jobs and infrastructure value, strengthening South Australia’s investment edge.