Canberra · Australian Government & corporate
Define the inputs.
Deliver the outputs.
Own the outcome.
Serata is a Canberra consultancy doing digital consulting, AI transformation and implementation. We supply the thinking, the talent and the delivery, and we stay until the outcome is real.
How we work
Most engagements fail at the seam between advice and delivery. We work both sides of it. We stay until the outcome is real.
Digital consulting
Advice and delivery across strategy, process, service and experience, scoped to the outcome you are funded for.
AI transformation
From AI pilots to AI in production: governance, platform and people, addressed together.
Implementation
Build, integrate, test and land. The part where most strategies quietly stop.
Talent
Specialists or whole formed teams, through the Digital Marketplace or direct labour hire.
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Nine practices, one accountable team. Strategy through to service.
AI design & delivery
Agentic systems that survive contact with an agency.
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Digital & AI strategy
A roadmap written by people who have sat on your side of the table.
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Business analysis & process modelling
Requirements held at arm's length from the technology.
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Communications & change
Adoption is the deliverable. Go-live is just a date.
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Operations & service management
Service that holds up on a Monday morning.
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Service integration & management
Many suppliers. One accountable service.
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Innovation
Innovation with a business case attached.
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Talent
The right people, cleared and available.
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User experience
Services people can finish on the first attempt.
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AI design & delivery
Agentic systems that survive contact with an agency.
Through Availe, our dedicated AI practice, we design, deliver and integrate AI strategies, agentic systems and automation: secure, ethical, and aligned to the Commonwealth's expectations for responsible AI.
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Agentic systems
An agent pursues a goal across several steps, choosing its own actions along the way. That is what makes it useful, and what makes it hard to assure.
So the design work is mostly constraint: which tools it may call, which data it may see, where a human must confirm, what is logged, and how you replay a decision six months later.
Built properly, you get a system that takes real work off a queue and leaves an audit trail an assurance team can follow.
Automation
Before anything clever there is usually a large volume of rules-heavy handling nobody enjoys: classifying correspondence, routing requests, matching records.
We start with work that is high volume, low judgement and well bounded. It builds the operational muscle and the trust that anything more ambitious will need.
Measured in hours returned to the team, not in models deployed.
Responsible AI
Responsible AI is a design problem more than a review problem. By the time an assurance panel sees a system, the decisions that matter have been made.
We front-load them: what the system must never do, where a person stays in the loop, how bias would be detected, and what data crosses which boundary.
The documentation an assurance process wants then falls out of the design work.
Secure sandpits
Staff cannot learn what AI is good for by reading about it, and they should not learn it by pasting departmental material into a consumer chatbot.
A sandpit gives them real models and real material of the right classification, inside a boundary that has been designed rather than assumed.
It is also the cheapest place to test an idea before anyone writes a business case for it.
Digital & AI strategy
A roadmap written by people who have sat on your side of the table.
Strategy, independent market and vendor analysis, and customer journey mapping. Aligned to departmental strategy and measured on return, not activity.
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Roadmaps
A roadmap is only useful if it tells you what to stop doing. Most are a list of everything everyone asked for, sorted by who asked loudest.
We sequence by dependency and evidence: what must exist before the next thing is possible, and how much change the organisation can absorb in a year.
The output is short: a sequence, the reasoning behind it, and the conditions that would make you change it.
Vendor analysis
Vendors are very good at demos. The gap between a demo and the same product inside your security posture and your data is where programs lose years.
We assess what the product does today, what is roadmap, what it costs at your scale, and who has run it in a comparable setting.
You get a comparison that holds up in front of a delegate.
Journey mapping
A service looks coherent on an org chart and fragmented to the person using it.
We trace real cases, including the ones that fail: the re-contacts, the abandoned forms, the phone call that follows a completed digital transaction.
The map earns its keep by pointing at a few changes with disproportionate effect.
Investment cases
A funding proposal has two audiences: those who care whether the benefit is real, and those who care whether you can deliver it.
We build both halves: benefit logic with its assumptions exposed, and a delivery approach with credible costs, dependencies and risks.
Written to survive the second and third round of questions, not just the first.
Business analysis & process modelling
Requirements held at arm's length from the technology.
A full business analysis capability, as a team or as named people inside yours. We settle what it must do before anyone argues about how.
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Elicitation
People rarely hand you a requirement. They describe a workaround, a frustration, or a solution they have already settled on.
The work is getting underneath that: workshops with the right people, interviews with the ones who never speak up in a workshop, and observation of what actually happens.
Done properly it surfaces the constraints nobody thought to mention, which is where most late surprises come from.
Process modelling
Two models matter: how the work flows now, and how it should flow. The first is harder, because current state is usually undocumented.
We model to the level of detail the decision needs and no further. A wall of notation nobody reads is a cost.
Both the business and the builders have to accept the model, so it has to be legible to both.
Traceability
Requirements go missing between phases. They get merged, deferred, reinterpreted inside a design, then dropped in a scope conversation.
Traceability links each one from its origin through design to its test, so dropping one becomes a decision somebody makes.
It is also what lets you answer, at the end, whether you built what was asked for.
Test-ready requirements
If a requirement cannot be tested it is a preference. “The system shall be user friendly” has ended more projects than any technical failure.
We write with verification in mind: what observation would show this is satisfied, and what would show it is not.
Our testers review requirements before development starts, while ambiguity is still cheap to fix.
The team we field
- Lead business analysts: approach, templates, coordination
- Business analysts: elicitation and deliverables
- Testers: independent verification of every artefact
- Project managers: scope, budget, schedule, risk
- Implementation specialists: architects, developers, change, training
Communications & change
Adoption is the deliverable. Go-live is just a date.
ADKAR-based change management, content strategy and internal communications that move people from aware to able, with the evidence that they got there.
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ADKAR
Change fails in predictable places. Someone does not know it is happening; someone knows but does not want it; someone wants it but cannot yet do it.
ADKAR names those states, so you can find which one a group is stuck in and treat that.
It turns “people are resisting” into a specific and fixable diagnosis.
Comms strategy
Communications planned separately from delivery arrive at the wrong moment: the announcement lands before anything is ready, the training after people have invented a workaround.
We plan against the delivery schedule, audience by audience, tied to the points where behaviour has to change.
Including the messages nobody wants to send, about what is being taken away.
Training
Training delivered too early is forgotten; training delivered too late is remediation.
We build it role-based and close to go-live, in the real system with realistic data, and make sure local supervisors can answer the questions that follow.
Materials are handed over in a form your team can edit, because the system will change.
Adoption measurement
Attendance is not adoption. Neither is a satisfaction score taken in the first week.
We agree the measures up front (use of the new path, fallback to the old one, error and rework rates) and baseline them before anything changes.
That gives you evidence for the benefit claim, and an early signal when a group is not coming along.
Operations & service management
Service that holds up on a Monday morning.
ITSM design and operation on ServiceNow and beyond: service desk, knowledge, self-service, and the measurement that keeps all three honest.
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ServiceNow
Most organisations we work with already run ServiceNow. The question is rarely whether to use it and almost always how much of it to switch on.
We design to the process first and configure second, and push back on customisation that will make the next upgrade expensive.
Where the platform does not fit, we say so rather than bending the organisation around it.
Service desk
The desk is where users form their opinion of every system you run.
We work on tiering and routing so the right issues reach the right people first time, and on measures that show whether it is helping.
Trend data from the desk is the best free research a service owner has.
Knowledge
Most knowledge bases are written by the people who built the system, for the people who built the system.
We write for the person with the problem, in their words, and put the article where they hit the problem.
With an owner and a review cycle, because a stale article is worse than none.
Self-service
Self-service only saves anything if people can finish. A failed attempt costs you a call plus the goodwill spent trying.
We concentrate on the few request types that make up most of the volume, and make those completable without help.
Deflection is a consequence of quality. It cannot be mandated.
Service integration & management
Many suppliers. One accountable service.
SIAM operating models, tower governance and the integration layer that stops multi-vendor delivery turning into multi-vendor blame.
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Operating models
Multi-supplier arrangements work until something crosses a boundary. Then everyone is contractually correct and nothing is fixed.
The operating model settles in advance who holds the service end to end and what happens when accountability is ambiguous.
Written while everyone is calm, because it will be read during an outage.
Tower governance
Governance that exists only as a monthly report becomes theatre. Suppliers present green while the service gets worse.
We set up forums with real decision rights, reporting that shows the whole service, and escalation paths people will use.
Fewer meetings, with agendas that can change something.
Vendor integration
Separate contracts produce separate tooling, separate data and separate definitions of “resolved”. The user experiences the sum.
Integration means shared incident and change records, agreed severity definitions, and one view of the service everyone is measured against.
Unglamorous plumbing, and what makes everything else possible.
Service assurance
Reported and experienced performance drift apart quietly, and both parties believe their own numbers.
Assurance means sampling records, validating how measures are calculated, and testing whether reported results match what users got.
It protects the supplier relationship as often as it challenges it.
Innovation
Innovation with a business case attached.
Discovery, prototyping and innovation programs that end in a decision, not another demo nobody funds.
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Discovery
Discovery exists to make it cheap to be wrong. Its output is a decision (proceed, stop or reframe), not a solution.
The question is written down at the start, and the evidence needed to answer it is agreed before work begins.
Discovery that always recommends proceeding is not discovery.
Prototyping
People cannot give useful feedback on a description. They can on something they have just tried and failed to use.
We prototype at the lowest fidelity that will answer the question, and put it in front of real users early.
What you learn is usually not what you set out to test.
Innovation programs
A one-off innovation event produces sticky notes and no funded work. A program produces a pipeline.
Intake, triage, a small amount of money to explore, gates with genuine kill criteria, and a route into normal investment.
The kill criteria are the part everyone skips, and the part that makes it credible.
Benefits realisation
The benefit in a business case is a claim. Benefits realisation checks whether it turned up.
We baseline before the change, measure after, and report honestly, including where the benefit was smaller than forecast.
Organisations that do this get better at estimating, and that compounds.
Talent
The right people, cleared and available.
Individual specialists or whole teams for organisations, programs and projects, through the Digital Marketplace and direct labour hire.
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Specialists
A program is usually missing one or two specific capabilities rather than a whole team.
We place named individuals into your structure, reporting to your lead and working to your standards.
We brief them properly before they start, and stay close enough to notice if the fit is wrong.
Teams
Where the gap is a whole function, a formed team arrives with its own lead, its own method, and accountability for an outcome.
That shifts the management load off your people, usually the scarcest thing you have.
One conversation when something needs to change, rather than five.
Digital Marketplace
Serata is a registered seller on BuyICT, so an engagement can run through a panel your agency already holds.
That removes an approach to market and keeps commercial terms your procurement team knows.
Useful when work needs to start before a fresh procurement could conclude.
Labour hire
Sometimes the simplest arrangement is right: a contract, a rate, a person in a seat.
We run direct labour-hire placements where a consultancy engagement would add cost without adding value.
Onboarding, clearances and continuity sit with us rather than with you.
User experience
Services people can finish on the first attempt.
Research, service design and UX for digital self-service that both delights and deflects: fewer calls, better outcomes, happier staff.
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User research
The people who struggle with a service are the least likely to appear in your feedback. They give up rather than complain.
So research has to find them: observation, interviews, and time with front-line staff who watch the failures every day.
Small samples done properly beat large surveys of people who already cope.
Service design
The screens are the visible tenth. What decides whether someone can finish is usually back stage: the handoffs, the waiting, the second form.
Service design treats the whole chain as the thing being designed.
So the work includes the people who run the back stage, not only those who own the interface.
Prototyping
An interaction is cheap to change in a prototype and expensive to change in a release.
We test flows before they are built, with people who resemble the actual users.
Two or three rounds usually remove the worst of it.
Accessibility
A page can pass every automated check and still be unusable with a screen reader if nobody has tried.
We design for assistive technology from the start and test with it, rather than auditing at the end.
In government it is an obligation. It is also a decent proxy for whether the thing was built clearly.
Availe, the Serata AI practice
Our AI practice, on its own footing.
Availe is Serata's dedicated AI practice, so AI work gets specialists rather than spare capacity. It is built around three pillars.
Trust
Experienced government and AI people supporting responsible, effective adoption, secure and aligned to government standards.
People
Cloud and AI specialists, plus skills programs and targeted training designed for agencies.
Platforms
Engineers who design, build and run AI platforms, with secure sandpits for real work.
Platforms we deliver on
- AWS Bedrock
- Azure AI Foundry
- Google Vertex AI
- GovAI
- Anthropic Claude
Who we work for
We are outcomes people.
Technology is the engine. The outcome is the point. We work across Australian Government and corporate sectors with seasoned practitioners, not a bench of résumés.
- 2019The year Serata started delivering
- 9Practice areas, strategy through to service
- 5AI platforms we deliver on through Availe
Australian Government
Departments and agencies, where the real constraints are procurement, classification and the APS's own delivery frameworks.
Corporate
Private-sector programs with the same delivery discipline and fewer gates.
BuyICT seller
Registered on the Commonwealth's digital sourcing platform, so agencies can use a panel they already hold.
Canberra SME
Local, in your time zone, usually able to be in the room, and on the SME procurement pathways.
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Deliver.
One word. It has been the whole mission since 2019.
Talk to the people who do the work.
- info@serata.digital
- Buy through a panel
- Serata on BuyICT
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- Based in
- Canberra, Australian Capital Territory