AThe biggest challenge that I see for public sector organisations is keeping pace with digital transformation while working with competing priorities, shrinking budgets, and limited skilled resources.
Emerging capabilities like AI present great opportunities for departments, authorities and other groups to modernise and upskill their workforce to achieve more. However real-world budget pressures make it difficult to prioritise and fund new initiatives, even those with great potential for savings. I have seen good success where customer projects start small and provide a fast proof of value (as opposed to technology) before expanding scope to larger deliverables and procurements.

ARegardless of where an organisation is in its modernisation journey, they will likely need to do three things well to deliver transformative citizen experiences:

1. Identify specific citizen problems
2. Focus on outcomes rather than outputs
3. Build partnerships with private sector partners that enable co-creation and innovation

AWhile generative AI (GenAI) is dominating news headlines, it’s important to remember that organisations can also realise significant benefits by implementing general AI and machine learning (ML). Here are three ideas:

1. Chat agents powered by large language models (LLM) can significantly reduce the time employees spend responding to routine enquiries within their organisation. AI agents that have been fine-tuned by knowledgeable employees can provide high quality experiences, gaining staff confidence and raising productivity.
2. AI for anomaly detection helps improve security and reduce fraud. This can be used in many areas, including reviewing application forms, financial data, and inventory levels.
3. ML-led clustering of data can uncover insights to help optimise public services. For example, helping with proactive healthcare, maintenance of roads, and the lifecycle of equipment. It can also be used to optimise staffing decisions based on peak times, days, and seasons.