“Sluggish technology has hampered our public services for too long, and it’s costing us all a fortune in time and money,” said The Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP (Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology) announcing a shake-up for the public sector in January this year.
All of us can testify to the sluggishness, whether it concerns (lack of) communication among medical staff caring for us or the challenges of dealing with the local council.
Will AI live up to hopes that it can transform productivity in public services – and even better, help improve services while cutting costs?
AI applications certainly have tremendous potential to save time and money, and improve service quality, in areas ranging from health and adult social care to criminal justice and local government. But it is often difficult to distinguish hype from realistic opportunities, while unlocking those opportunities will require different ways of working in the public sector.
In recent research at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, we conducted several workshops in collaboration with Professor Wendy Hall, Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton, bringing together academics and practitioners to explore the opportunities and barriers to AI adoption in public services. Additionally, with Professor Bart Van Ark, Managing Director of The Productivity Institute, at the University of Manchester, we have specifically looked at the responsible use of AI in adult social care. (Both of these studies will be published soon.)
Our work, along with that of other researchers, reveals several key themes. One of the most prominent is the central role data plays in AI adoption.
The process of organising data into a consistent and usable format, overcoming barriers to linking datasets, addressing privacy and security needs, and gaining access to comprehensive data for service improvements are all time-intensive tasks.
