AI adoption within the United Kingdom’s civil service is taking a somewhat different approach than Canada’s. While both countries are seized with the importance of a concerted government effort to harness AI for improved public service delivery, Britain is eschewing a centralized, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in favour of decentralized departmental adoption.  

Testifying before the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, the permanent secretary (deputy minister) for the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology allowed that departments should basically proceed at their own pace when it came to AI adoption. “I don’t think we have to have a completely symmetrical and consistent approach”, the senior official stated. “There are going to be departments who should and can be moving faster because of the nature of what they do.” Instead, they will concentrate on “consistency” in outcomes, governance, and leadership.  

To accomplish this, the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology has created a common toolkit to assist departments in utilizing AI to analyse public consultation responses, prepare briefings, search through parliamentary debate records, and securely transcribe minutes of meetings. In classic British humour, his toolkit is called “Humphrey” after the famous BBC comedy series character Sir Humphrey Appleby from “Yes, Minister”. The toolkit currently has seven tools:  

  • Consult – designed to rapidly analyse responses to government consultations in a matter of hours; 
  • Parlex – to help policymakers search through and analyse parliamentary debate to shape their thinking and better manage bills; 
  • Minute – a secure AI transcription service for meetings; 
  • Redbox – a generative tool to help summarise policy and preparing briefings;  
  • Lex – legal-analysis tool  
  • Connect – a new AI tool designed to speed up the connection of clean-energy projects to the national grid; 
  • Scout – designed to help ensure big expensive infrastructure projects are delivered on time and to budget. 

This AI initiative is part of a new Government Digital Services being established by the Labour government as a digital centre of government. This involves consolidating several existing digital and AI units across government and placing them within the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology. The aim, according to the government’s A Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, is to catalyze “a shift towards catalysing joined-up delivery in line with the government’s missions”. 

Similar to the Canadian AI Strategy just released, a premium is being placed on talent recruitment, skills-upgrading, and compensation within the British civil service. It pointed out that digital and data capability in the public sector are “severely lacking” and that a civil service cyber-specialist could earn as much as 35 percent less than an equivalent job in the private sector and information-security officers as much as 40 percent less. The lack of in-house digital and technology skills means that government has had to rely on outside contractors to fill this gap at a greater cost to taxpayers. The Blueprint pledges instead that, “The digital centre will work with the Government People Group to elevate digital leadership, invest in the profession and the competition for talent, and raise the digital skills baseline for all public servants”.  Currently, just under 6 percent of all civil servants are e members of the digital, data and technology profession.