Government right to invest in AI in the public sector

Following reports that the Government’s AI efficiency drive will impact civil service employee numbers, specialist software consultancy, Scott Logic, has highlighted that the move will open up opportunities for professionals, rather than taking their jobs.

Civil service employee numbers have ballooned in recent years to over 540,000, in part due to the creation of taskforces for Brexit and Covid, and in response to chronic underinvestment in technology.

According to Scott Logic, rebalancing workloads to channel tasks that are more suited to AI – such as navigating complex global compliance requirements – through this technology will not only allow for greater efficiency and productivity, but will also provide an opportunity for employees to better invest their time in driving real change where it’s needed.

Stephen Foreshew-Cain, CEO at Scott Logic and former Executive Director of Government Digital Services, commented on why the Government is right to stand by its AI investment plans, “This isn’t the first time there has been a storm in a teacup around new technologies taking public sector jobs.

“Before the invention of the telephone, human couriers were employed to deliver paper memos between offices and departments in the civil service, and AI is simply the next iteration of that technological development pathway. The Government is correct to embrace new technologies – including AI – to make public services more efficient.

“The UK trails behind most major nations in productivity, and the adoption of AI to expedite currently manual, repetitive processes will help to rectify that. But rather than stealing civil service jobs as has been suggested, the use of AI in the public sector will likely open up other roles that will require additional human expertise, particularly to manage implementation and review outputs. If anything, it’s entirely possible that AI will create a range of new positions and responsibilities, which we’re already seeing with the plans to recruit 2,000 new TechTrack apprentices.”

“In the future, the Government will need more people with AI-specific expertise in data quality management, security and privacy protection, system auditing, bias detection and mitigation, and oversight and governance, to name just a few areas. As technologies mature and AI literacy grows, civil servants will also become the judges of which use cases are suited to the application of AI and which are not. For example, it may never be possible to derisk GenAI sufficiently to use it for certain high-value tasks, in its current form at least.”

“AI also offers new possibilities for professionals to deliver real change in their roles faster than ever before. In practice, it means that non-technical civil servants can leverage new tools for so-called ‘vibe coding’, where code is developed by giving prompts to AI tools, which can enable them to turn ideas into prototypes far quicker, with support from architects to refine the work effectively. This type of expedited service and the ability to put concepts into action, at pace, are some of the less widely discussed benefits of AI that could reshape how the civil service operates.”