Government Agencies are being asked to deliver more digital change with less budget, fewer people, and rising scrutiny. Responsible AI is now formally on the public sector agenda, with guidance to support safe, productivity-focused adoption.
Yet many programmes unwittingly are impacted by the Automation Paradox - teams attempt to automate to save, only to watch costs rise as maintenance and complexity bite. Afor’s research finds up to 70 percent of test automation projects fail to meet expectations, largely due to maintenance burden, skills gaps, and tool sprawl.
In this practical session, Afor’s Nessta Jones and Matt Belcher show councils how AI-enhanced, practice-led test automation lowers cost-to-change, restores release reliability, and reduces licensing spend.
You will see a concise case study and a strategic pathway tailored for councils seeking measurable savings and stronger governance.
About the Presenters:
Nessta Jones
Lead Strategy and Resource Manager
Afor
Nessta Jones is the QA Strategy Manager at Afor.co.nz which is a specialist test automation and management consultancy based in Auckland, NZ. She has been involved in the management and strategy of testing consultancies over the last 24yrs.
She started her testing career in 1993 in the UK and have enjoyed working for many different types of companies, projects and industries including: safety critic real-time Air Traffic Control, airlines, international banking, insurance, energy, dairy, logistics and TV and initially cut her teeth with development of defence systems.
Matt Belcher
Lead Automation Architect and Engineer
Afor
Matt Belcher is a test lead/senior software testing engineer with a broad range of experience within the IT industry, with a focus on test automation. This includes experience in IT network administration, software development and design, and test analysis.
His most recent roles undertaken have been as a technical test lead/engineer. Some of his tasks in these roles involve creating automated test suites and frameworks, mentoring the team with agile and behavioral driven development techniques, implementing automation in the build pipeline, performance testing, environment management, security and analysis.
Matt is able to make use of my development and technical background for performance and stress testing, as well as solving other problems of a technical nature. He is comfortable working in Windows and UNIX based environments and he is confident in many application and scripting languages in order to automate applications and services.
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