UK Government Unveils Digitization Plans to Boost Productivity

The U.K. government has announced a set of digitization plans aimed at saving £45 billion each year in productivity.

The headline announcement is “Humphrey,” a set of AI tools designed to speed up policy-making activities within the public sector.

Humphrey: AI Tools for Policy-Making

Humphrey tools summarize government data, including debates, meetings, policies, laws, and responses to consultations, allowing civil servants to search through it more quickly when making decisions.

Before Humphrey, the collation of consultation responses was outsourced to contractors, costing the taxpayer £100,000 per project.

New Team to Improve Public Services Efficiency

The government is establishing a new team within the Department for Science, Technology, and Innovation to identify how technology can be used to improve the efficiency of public services.

Current systems result in the U.K. tax authority receiving 100,000 phone calls daily and the driving licence agency processing 45,000 physical letters, leading to unnecessarily long response times.

The new team will start by developing solutions to help people with disabilities or long-term illnesses access public services more quickly, such as financial support or healthcare.

The technology will connect relevant government departments or local authorities, eliminating the need for individuals to be passed between up to 40 different entities in a series of phone calls.

Other Initiatives

Other initiatives announced on January 21 include:

• A full roadmap of the plans for renewing the government’s £23 billion annual tech spend will be released in the summer.

UK Public Services Plagued by Legacy Technology

European companies tend to specialize in mature technologies, making the region technologically behind, particularly compared to the U.S.

The U.K. is a top culprit, particularly in critical national infrastructure, which is difficult and expensive to update without downtime.

A government report published this week found that nearly half of public services, such as those offered by the NHS and local councils, cannot be accessed online.

For example, registering a death must be done in person, and businesses must place a newspaper advert when they want to buy a lorry.

The report found that a quarter of all digital systems used by the central government are outdated, leading to high maintenance costs and a heightened risk of cyber attacks.

NHS England alone saw 123 critical service outages last year, resulting in missed appointments and disruptions caused by staff being forced to use paper-based systems.

Cybercrime disruption can have even more severe consequences. In June, a ransomware attack on pathology company Synnovis led to months of NHS disruption and resulted in harm to dozens of patients, with long-term or permanent damage in at least two cases.

Government’s Commitment to AI Leadership

This announcement comes just a few days after the government’s “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” outlining the 50 ways it will build out the AI sector and turn the U.K. into a “world leader.”

The strategy involves boosting public computing capacity twentyfold, creating a training data library, and building AI hubs in deindustrialized areas.

Last year, the U.K. signed an agreement committing to explore how AI can improve public services and boost economic growth, along with the other Group of Seven nations.

Conclusion

The U.K. government’s digitization plans aim to improve productivity and efficiency within the public sector, leveraging AI and technology to achieve these goals.

The plans include the establishment of a new team to identify opportunities for technology to improve public services, the development of AI tools to speed up policy-making, and a commitment to making the U.K. a leader in AI.