Harnessing AI for the Future of Public Service Delivery

The UK is among the world’s top three countries for AI investment. Valued at £72.3bn in 2024, the UK’s AI industry is the largest in Europe, attracting an average of £200 million a day in private sector investment. With techUK’s AI Campaign Week shining a spotlight on the UK’s AI ecosystem, it’s a good time to examine how AI can assist Britain’s embattled public sector, especially in high-stakes, citizen-facing environments.

For local authorities, NHS trusts, blue-light emergency services and central government departments, the conversation has moved beyond AI curiosity. Now, the questions are around how AI can assist in improving public services whilst helping solve government’s long-standing productivity challenge. Here are three of the most important considerations that stakeholders need to know in order for AI to realize its full potential in UK public services.

The Productivity Problem

With its well-developed ecosystem, Britain’s AI tech sector now has the opportunity and the means to solve the country’s long-standing productivity challenge, and nowhere are productivity improvements more sorely needed than in the UK’s public sector. Public services are under increasing pressure to reduce costs, maximise resource utilisation and increase efficiency while meeting soaring citizen expectations. All this against a background of new structural reforms, including the abolition of NHS England, changes to the roles and makeup of Integrated Care Boards and Local Government Reorganisation to create new Unitary and Combined Authorities across the country.

Following a further fall in ‘GDP per hour worked’ last year, from an already low level, AI offers a generational opportunity to transform the experience of workers in Britain’s public sector, introducing unprecedented levels of efficiency at the same time as boosting job satisfaction. With practically every country in the world vying for AI supremacy, it is crucial that Britain stays on the front foot to improve productivity and unlock competitive advantage.

The Future of Public Sector Services

Perhaps the most important enabler of AI is people. Tech and business leaders must understand AI well enough to champion it, frontline workers need to feel empowered, not threatened, and citizens must be engaged in how AI shapes the services on which they rely.

New, AI-powered or AI-supported roles will require a blend of traditional workplace skills and new, AI-specific competencies. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report found that broadening digital skills is expected to be the most impactful trend, with 60% of employers expecting this to transform their organisations by 2030. Public sector agencies that invest in retraining and upskilling their workforces stand to benefit the most, turning potential disruption into opportunities for growth and innovation.

AI Assurance: Is Regulation Enough?

For the UK to lead, ethical safeguards and transparency must be embedded into every layer of AI development and deployment. Citizens must know when AI is being used, how and where decisions are made, and how to challenge them if needed. For AI to reach its potential in the UK, there must be active collaboration between governmental regulators and the tech industry in order to strike a balance between innovation and safety. British citizens and organisations won’t stand for bad practices and many are already demanding data sovereignty arrangements that exceed statutory requirements, especially when processing sensitive information such as health or finances.

The quality, safety and use of data remains a key consideration. The continued prevalence of siloed and inconsistent data makes AI implementation difficult for public sector organisations. The proposed Data (Use and Access) Bill attempts to standardise the way in which AI-enabled IT systems read and process information, which should help.

Driving Economic Growth

AI offers the public sector a once-in-a-generation opportunity to boost efficiency, improve workplaces and deliver more personalised, responsive public sector services. With the correct tools and processes, AI can supercharge productivity, unlock new efficiencies, and ease the strain on the UK’s public sector services.

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