Every senior leader in the public sector is now thinking about AI. Most of the conversations Ive had are overly focused on the tech itself. Which tools should we adopt? How do we procure these safely? Which procurement route is easiest? What governance should we put in place? What are the cost benefits and upfront spend required? When will we see improvements?
All good questions but these arent the ones that will determine whether AI delivers value in your organisation.
The public sector is excited about the productivity wins and improved citizen services resulting, whilst mindful of the impact on existing jobs.
The private sector is using AI to augment roles knowing the value that can be generated, which can hopefully lead to that 'growth' we all keep hearing about. Augmentation not replacement.
The questions that will determine value for the public sector need to be asked upfront:
Where is AI actually needed - what problem are you actually solving?
This was core to the AI approach i learnt on Oxford Uni's AI programme, focus on identifying the real needs first. Not AI for Ai's sake. Use it to free up time, service citizens more cohesively or reduce operational cost.
Having a clear view of the organisation's problems can be transformational, technology however cant fix broken processes ( or relationships) it only digitises them. If caseflow processes are slow because accountability and sign off are slow or unclear, an AI layer on top will simply create faster poor decisions rather than slow ones.
How will your people actually experience this?
Public sector people are weary of change programmes and sceptical of something being done to them in the name of efficiency. AI, attracting huge amounts of publicity about job replacement is now here.
If you fail to engage people, unions, staff representatives early on and honestly around what it means for their jobs, there will be resistance borne out of fear. Even when roles remain many will see AI as an excuse to load more work upon them before theyve experienced personally that AI can free up time to take on more work or clinics or get involved in new policy development.
Who is in the room when decisions on AI are made?
AI systems reflect the data they are trained on and the decisions made by the people who build and deploy them. Dont leave it to your techies, great though they are!
In a public sector context where people using services are often those with the least power in the system, this matters enormously. Are the communities, internal and external, most affected by automated decisions involved in designing the necessary safeguards?
Common sense co-design is the key as ever with any technology, process or change introduced.
If AI is carrying out the junior tasks that grads and apprentices currently undertake, what do they do now?
Ive been thinking a great deal about the impact of AI that takes on the tasks we've traditionally used to train up our juniors. What will AI do to the career pathway and 'feeder' grades? How can we 'bring in and bring on' that talent we will need in 10-20 years if AI has snaffled all the interesting work?
Keeping the person in the loop is critical to success and governance. Our junior staff can perform this role, acting as the eyes and ears for senior leaders, tracking performance, managing the teams of AI agents we will be 'employing' prompting their work and providing oversight - but how can we make that fulfilling and a chance to learn the tools of the trade not just how to oversee the AI tools?
A question we must think through carefully as we move into the new Age of AI.
However none of the above means being sceptical of AI. I use MS boundaried Co-Pilot to support my work and have even got a team of AI agents now. Who are great though prone to arranging the odd meeting without me! I am a fan of ambient scribes having used one for a couple of years, So I know from first hand experience that its making me more productive ( and freeing me from the hell of MS Excel!)
I think the organisations that will get the most from AI will treat it as a tool in the box to support them, will think carefully about those niggling issues that AI could resolve and, above all, will invest in supporting their people and citizens they serve through good engagement, co-design and training plus routes to fix issues or suggest improvements.
Exciting times ahead!
