At a glance
- Company
- Deloitte (Australia)Professional services firm
- Industry
- Professional services
- Where and when
- Australia. December 2024 – February 2026.
- Who produced the figures
- Official recordThe dates and wording come from the government department’s publication page and from the report itself.
What they did
An Australian government department hired Deloitte to review the IT system behind one of its compliance schemes. Deloitte did the work from December 2024 to June 2025. The first version of the final report was dated 4 July 2025. The department published it.
The numbers
- Two corrected versions. The report was reissued on 26 September 2025, and again on 3 February 2026.
- What the first correction fixed. The report says it was updated “to correct those citations and reference list entries which contained errors”, and to amend its summary of a court case, which also contained errors.
- What it left alone. The report says the updates did not change its findings or recommendations.
- AI use disclosed. The corrected report says one phase of the work “included the use of a generative artificial intelligence (AI) large language model (Azure OpenAI GPT-4o) based tool chain”. The tool was licensed by the department and ran in the department’s own cloud account. That phase checked whether the system’s code matched the business requirements.
What happened next
Press reports say Deloitte repaid part of its fee. The department’s page says the February 2026 version was issued “to address identified corrections”.
Same firm, another country. In Canada, a 526-page health workforce plan that Deloitte wrote for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, at a cost of about CAD 1.6 million, cited at least four research papers that do not exist. Press reports say Deloitte acknowledged the wrong citations and stood by the report’s conclusions. Source: HR Reporter.
What the case shows
- Wrong citations reached a client in a paid report. Review before delivery did not catch them.
- Disclosure came with the correction. The use of the AI tool is stated in the corrected report.
- Fixing it took more than one round. A second set of corrections followed four months after the first.
What this says about the practices
Practices that were missing
- Budget for the work AI creates Review before delivery did not catch the wrong citations. The report had to be corrected twice. Do first · Effort: low (days, one person)
- Keep a person checking anything that goes to a customer or carries legal weight Wrong citations and a wrong summary of a court case reached the client in the final report. Do first · Effort: medium (weeks, a few people)
What the company changed afterwards
Sources
- Australian Government, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. Targeted Compliance Framework Assurance Review – Final Report. Publication page and report (version updated 3 February 2026). dewr.gov.au
- HR Reporter (25 November 2025). Press report on a Deloitte report for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. hrreporter.com