Built by people who understand
both sides of the table.
Nguma is an Indigenous-owned Australian company. Our founders bring deep government recruitment experience, enterprise technology security, and commercial leadership to a problem they have seen up close: compliance-heavy government work being done with tools that were never designed for it.
A specific problem. A considered answer.
“After eight years inside APS recruitment, I knew exactly where the compliance gaps were. So we built the platform that closes them.”
Elizabeth O’Neil, Managing Director & Co-Founder
The Australian Government recruitment process carries more documentation obligations than almost any other hiring context: merit-based selection under the Public Service Act 1999, privacy obligations under the Australian Privacy Principles, audit trail requirements for Merit Protection review, and increasingly, AI governance obligations under the DTA’s Responsible AI Policy. The tools most organisations were using to manage that process were general-purpose meeting transcription apps built for US enterprise markets, with no awareness of these obligations and no Australian data residency by default.
Nguma was built to fill that gap. Not as an add-on compliance layer sitting on top of an existing product, but as a platform designed from the first line of code around the specific requirements of Australian Government work. The compliance posture is the architecture, not a feature.
The people behind the platform.
Nguma’s founders bring government recruitment, platform security, and commercial experience that the product’s depth reflects directly.
Elizabeth O’Neil
Elizabeth leads Nguma as Managing Director and holds a majority direct shareholding, giving the company its Indigenous majority ownership and control. She brings eight years of APS recruitment experience to the product’s compliance design, and is the authorised signatory for Nguma’s Government and commercial engagements.
- Eight years of APS recruitment experience
- Drives compliance, governance, and financial discipline
- majority owner and authorised signatory
Susan O’Neil
Susan brings over 20 years of recruitment industry experience and more than 30 years across government and corporate settings to Nguma’s operational foundations. Her deep understanding of how government panels actually run shapes the product’s workflow decisions at every step.
- 20+ years in recruitment, 30+ years in government and corporate
- Ensures defensible, compliant interview workflows
- Shapes product decisions with enterprise and government clarity
Toby Somerville
Toby leads Nguma’s architecture, AI pipeline, and platform engineering. With 20 years of experience building secure, scalable platforms and a track record of leading global security accreditations, he designed Nguma’s infrastructure around Australian data sovereignty requirements from the outset.
- 20 years building secure, scalable platforms
- Led global security accreditations including SOC 2 and ISO 27001
- Principal investigator, Nguma Shortlisting Module R&D (R&DTI registered)
Buying Nguma satisfies your procurement obligations.
Nguma is majority Indigenous-owned and controlled, and Supply Nation registered. Every purchase contributes directly to your Indigenous procurement targets and can be made without a formal tender process.
Indigenous Procurement Policy
CPR Exemption 16 permits direct purchase from an Indigenous SME at any contract value, with a simple value-for-money quote and no tender. The Mandatory Set-Aside gives Indigenous SMEs first consideration within its threshold band, where Nguma sits.
Aboriginal Procurement Policy
Agencies are directed to consider Aboriginal businesses first, with direct engagement pathways for eligible contracts. Nguma spend counts toward your agency’s reporting under the policy.
Social Procurement Framework
Purchasing from Aboriginal businesses is a defined social procurement objective. Nguma spend counts toward your department’s reporting against the framework.
Queensland Procurement Policy 2026
Buying from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses is embedded in Queensland’s procurement objectives. Nguma spend counts toward your entity’s reporting.
Aboriginal Economic Participation Strategy
An across-Government target directs a minimum share of agency spend to Aboriginal businesses and ACCOs, administered through the Office of the Industry Advocate.
Aboriginal Procurement Policy
Mandates progressive targets for the award of contracts to Aboriginal businesses and ACCOs, applying to all contracts above its threshold.
No dedicated policy
Tasmania does not currently operate a dedicated Aboriginal procurement policy. Nguma’s Supply Nation registration still evidences Indigenous ownership for agencies applying their own reconciliation or social procurement commitments.
Aboriginal Procurement Policy
Applies above a low contract threshold. Agencies report on contracts awarded to Aboriginal Business Enterprises, alongside Value for Territory assessment.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Procurement Policy
Territory entities must identify opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enterprises and are encouraged to seek quotes from them, using Supply Nation’s Indigenous Business Direct where no Canberra-region supplier is suitable.
Portfolio targets. Every Commonwealth portfolio carries annual Indigenous procurement targets by number of contracts and by contract value under the Indigenous Procurement Policy, which was strengthened in May 2026 with revised criteria applying from 1 July 2026. Buying Nguma contributes to both figures. State and territory reporting varies by jurisdiction. We provide letters of engagement and participation data formatted for your Agency’s reporting requirements on request.
Where we stand. Plainly stated.
We do not overstate certifications we have not yet earned, and we do not hide the ones still in progress. This is the current position.
The principles behind every decision we make.
We don’t train on your data. Ever.
Audio, transcripts, applications and metadata are never used to train or improve any AI model. It is a hard contractual prohibition in our standard terms at every tier, not an enterprise-only option and not a setting you have to find and switch on. It also means nothing that happens in your process can follow a person into anyone else’s.
Australian-hosted, and documented.
Nguma’s application database and records are held in Australia, in AWS’s Sydney region, and speech-to-text is processed in Australia. We publish full architecture and data-residency documentation under NDA, so your security team can assess it rather than take a marketing claim on trust.
The people in the room decide. We document it.
A panel, a committee, a board, a bench. Nguma does not assess, rank or recommend anyone, and it has no capability to do so. Every AI-assisted output requires human review and approval before it becomes the record. This is a design position, not a limitation we intend to remove.
A record that holds up.
The value of a record is whether it survives scrutiny. Ours is produced as the decision is made rather than written from memory afterwards, every action is timestamped and attributable to a named person, and the whole trail exports for review, FOI or regulatory examination.
We say what we haven’t got yet.
ISO 27001 in progress. ISO 42001 in progress. IRAP planned. We do not claim certifications we have not earned, and we do not quietly drop the ones still under way. The compliance posture above is the honest current state, not a wish list.
Indigenous ownership with constitutional teeth.
Majority Indigenous-owned and controlled, with constitutional safeguards adopted by special resolution in March 2026 that cannot be diluted without a supermajority vote. NSWICC certified and Supply Nation registered. Ownership is who we are, not a procurement strategy added after the fact.
Book a 30-minute demo with our team.
Elizabeth or Steve will walk you through the workflow relevant to your use case , Government Agency, recruitment agency, or transcription. No sales script. A real conversation about your specific compliance requirements.