‘Archaic’ tech sees public sector missing £45 billion productivity savings every year

Public sector workers are being held back by archaic technology, “crippling productivity and slashing public satisfaction in services”, according to a new government report set to be published on Tuesday.

With nearly half of public services unable to be accessed online, people are spending too much time applying for support in person, including time on hold or travelling to council offices. Public sector workers are also wasting time sifting through physical letters, says the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT).

“Some departments manage over 500 paper-based services and a lack of information sharing between departments further hampers citizens, often the most vulnerable. For example, patients with long term health conditions can be forces to speak to over 40 different services to access the care and support they need and are entitled to, with these different public bodies rarely sharing information, leaving people to repeat themselves time and again,” it said.

The Technology Secretary Peter Kyle is set to announce “a wholesale reshaping of how services use technology, reaching across local government, the NHS, and more, in a bid to modernise the state.” The strategy will include the use of new AI tools.

The announcement comes a week after the government promised to revolutionise public services through artificial intelligence (AI) with its AI Opportunities Action Plan.

“Technology that sits at the foundation of our country has been left to wither and decay under the hands of the previous government, too often grinding to a halt and stalling essential public services – racking up a huge bill for the taxpayer,” said Technology Secretary Peter Kyle.

“It doesn’t have to be this way – and it won’t be with our Plan for Change. There is a £45 billion jackpot for the public sector if we get technology adoption right, that’s twice the size of the black hole we faced when we took office, and it’s not an opportunity we can let pass us by.”

Outdated systems

The new findings are also expected to show government departments have been pushed towards bringing in contractors and consultants to complete basic technological tasks instead of full-time staff. This is despite them costing three times more than civil servants and “eating up” £14.5 billion in taxpayer money a year.

Findings will show that over one-in-four digital systems used by central government were found to be outdated. In the worst cases, this figure almost tripled (70 percent). This outdated technology can rack up huge maintenance costs, ultimately resulting in the taxpayer paying out three-to-four times more than if the technology was kept up to date.

A growing number of these outdated systems are ‘red-rated’ for reliability and security risk. The report found that NHS England alone saw 123 critical service outages last year, often meaning appointments are missed and patients can’t get the care they need because staff were forced back to using paper-based systems.

Among the reforms to be announced this week, a new offering from the GDS will search for vulnerabilities across the public sector that hackers could use to shut down essential services and stop citizens accessing critical support. Support will then help different organisations fix these issues and make the UK more resilient to cyberattacks.

Energy AI tool – ‘Connect’

The Government has also unveiled a new AI tool that will help to speed up the queue to connect clean energy projects to the national grid, “helping to reduce energy bills and power the AI economy.”

Connect, developed by AI experts in Whitehall, is an AI tool under development that could help to reduce delays large-scale energy generation projects, like wind and solar farms, are facing to get a connection to the electricity grid.

The technology will also support the work of the newly announced AI Energy Council, bringing together energy producers and big tech companies to understand the power demands of AI and the Government’s ambition to expand compute capacity by twenty times.

Over the last five years, the grid connection queue has grown tenfold and now contains over four times the amount of energy generation the UK is predicted to need by 2050. Many of these projects are speculative or do not have the necessary funding or planning permission to progress, causing delays for viable projects behind them.

Added to this, the ‘first-come, first-served’ connection process, and much-needed upgrades to the grid’s capacity, are contributing to energy developers facing delays of up to 10 years to get new renewable electricity flowing into the grid.

With input from the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero, Ofgem and the National Energy System Operator, the team behind ‘Connect’ are exploring how this work – powered by AI – could be applied to better match energy generation projects – like ready-to-go large scale wind farm projects stuck in a queue – to grid capacity where it is available.

Infrastructure AI tool – ‘Scout’

Scout is another tool developed by the team, which will help officials make sure major multi-billion-pound infrastructure projects are delivered on time and to budget. It does this by automatically analysing thousands of documents to help detect problems earlier, enabling timely interventions that keep critical projects on track.

The tool replaces manual processes where up to 150 reports and documents are reviewed, leading to crucial details being glossed over and opportunities to prevent problems missed. It will help civil servants to be more efficient, and improve the government’s ability to run multi-billion-pound projects to time and budget, fixing the foundations of our economy as we drive ahead in delivering economic growth.

In the tool’s analysis, it follows stringent guidelines set by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority,  and reportedly cuts manual processing time from hours in five minutes.