A public services think tank has warned that the Government needs to “fundamentally rewire itself” if it is to deliver on its ambitions for transforming the public sector through artificial intelligence (AI).
In a new report, think tank Reform is calling for the Government to establish a Government Data and AI Service (GDAIS), as a separate function within CDDO, sitting alongside the Government Digital Service (GDS). Its remit would be driving AI adoption across the public sector, and it would be led by a Government Chief AI Officer, said Reform. The GDAIS should incorporate the current Incubator for AI (i.AI), it added.
Reform also recommended that the Government allocate £1 billion to finance a new AI Transformation Fund. It said the Fund “should be available for projects which already have an existing evidence base, and demonstrably high productivity-boosting potential. There should be flexibility in what kinds of spending the Fund is used for, provided they support the scaling up of AI adoption in defined use cases.”
Public sector is too risk-averse
In the report, Reform said: “Artificial intelligence is developing far faster than any government can keep up with – particularly a government which is still catching up with the last generation of digital transformation. It will not be a ‘silver bullet’ for all the challenges which the State faces in the 21st Century. But it has huge promise to improve the stagnant productivity of the public services – not just to do ‘more with less’, but also to transform the kinds of services available to the public in fundamental ways.”
However, it noted that this transformation will not happen “unless government fundamentally rewires itself to adopt the new tools much more quickly.
“Compared to private industry (particularly the fastest-growing companies) public service adoption of AI is extremely limited, and change is happening too slowly. The public sector is still too risk-averse to even test AI in many cases, and lacks the focus and investment required to see projects through to deployment at scale.”
To build momentum, the organisation said the Government should focus on using AI in areas where there is a strong evidence base, a quick route to adoption at scale, and which add value in the most challenging parts of the State.
“Proving the government can successfully use AI, and reap widespread benefits from doing so, is essential to making the case for further adoption. In practice, this means reorienting the Government’s approach – greater central leadership to drive AI adoption throughout public services; funding which can be flexibly deployed, quickly, to sustain and scale up successful pilots; more in-house capability; and procuring much more flexibly to reduce the reliance on a small number of suppliers,” it said.
