Context is everything
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The Strategy-Shaped Object

australian-public-service

The Strategy-Shaped Object

I've just had a look at the Australian Government’s "National AI Plan 2025" and I'm not surprised. It certainly looks like a strategy. It has vision statements, goals, and nine distinct actions. But look closer, and the familiar emptiness yawns back at you.

By Felix Barbalet 02 Dec 2025
The All-Singing, All-Dancing Central Team

australian-public-service

The All-Singing, All-Dancing Central Team

There’s a persistent belief in the public sector that if the existing machinery is slow, risk-averse, and fragmented, the solution is to build a new, smaller machine next to it. A "Centre of Excellence," a "Transformation Office," an "Innovation Hub." It’s the

By Felix Barbalet 29 Nov 2025
The Harness and the Haze: Six Reflections on Stochastic Architecture

ai-architecture

The Harness and the Haze: Six Reflections on Stochastic Architecture

It feels like we are at an inflection point; the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) are extraordinary, offering new ways to synthesize information, automate complex cognitive tasks, and extract insights from vast unstructured datasets. But integrating these stochastic components - these probabilistic black boxes - into systems that demand

By Felix Barbalet 28 Nov 2025
The Automated Managerialist's Dream

australian-public-service

The Automated Managerialist's Dream

I remember sitting in a Gartner Conference workshop around 2013, somewhere in the Sydney. We were talking about "Big Data" and the Australian Public Service. The consultancy partner leading the session, all suit and enthusiasm, declared that data was the "new oil" and that if organisations

By Felix Barbalet 12 Nov 2025

Featured

The Harness and the Haze: Six Reflections on Stochastic Architecture

The Harness and the Haze: Six Reflections on Stochastic Architecture

It feels like we are at an inflection point; the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) are extraordinary, offering new ways to synthesize information, automate complex cognitive tasks, and extract insights from vast unstructured datasets. But integrating these stochastic components - these probabilistic black boxes - into systems that demand

By Felix Barbalet 28 Nov 2025
Leveraging Polylith to improve consistency, reduce complexity and increase changeability

Leveraging Polylith to improve consistency, reduce complexity and increase changeability

[This post originally appeared on the Qantas Engineering Blog] Whilst you might not know “what” Polylith is, I’ll bet that the factors that influenced its adoption as our source architecture — the “why” — will be very familiar. This story explores the driving forces of code changeability, consistency and complexity and

By Felix Barbalet 16 Jan 2024

Latest

Deja Vu: Why the APS struggles with data maturity

Deja Vu: Why the APS struggles with data maturity

I’ve just read the latest Australian Public Service Data Maturity Report... and honestly, it feels like déjà vu. The headline? A system-wide score of 2 out of 5 which Finance optimistically labels as “Developing”. Key areas like Data Architecture, Analytics, and crucially Data Quality & Metadata are stuck at

By Felix Barbalet 14 Apr 2025
Leveraging Polylith to improve consistency, reduce complexity and increase changeability

Leveraging Polylith to improve consistency, reduce complexity and increase changeability

[This post originally appeared on the Qantas Engineering Blog] Whilst you might not know “what” Polylith is, I’ll bet that the factors that influenced its adoption as our source architecture — the “why” — will be very familiar. This story explores the driving forces of code changeability, consistency and complexity and

By Felix Barbalet 16 Jan 2024
Context is everything
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Context is everything

Reflections on engineering data-centric systems