The Week 17 January 2025
Policy Director
It’s been a long week in Westminster. Who was it that said “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”? I know how they must have felt.
So it’s easy to forget that the Prime Minister started this week trying to make his mark on one of the few trends we can be sure will make it into the history books. He launched the Government’s ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ (say that five times fast), written by government adviser and tech investor Matt Clifford.
To the Government’s credit, this is the most meaningful intervention we have seen so far from them on the subject of AI, which both parties have long promised will turbo-charge our economy and fix our ailing public services. Renewing investments in building computational capacity which were previously cancelled, AI Growth Zones to make it easier to build datacentres, a big focus on attracting the best and the brightest from across the world, and ‘UK Sovereign AI’, a new public body with the enviable task of delivering it all.
But the crucial section for us is on the thorny issue of AI in government. We’re particularly pleased to see the focus on getting AI adopted at scale in public services. Our paper Getting the machine learning drew attention to ‘pilotitus’: how most government AI projects get stuck in an interminable exploratory stage without the will to either take them to the next level, or cancel them.
Of everything in the (50) recommendations, the most important one for public services is definitely the plan to adopt a more flexible approach to procurement: particularly using the Competitive Flexible Procedure in the new Procurement Act provisions to bring in SMEs on a trial basis, and letting them bid for government work based on demos rather than bureaucratic bid documents. I threaded my wider reflections on the announcement, and Sean blogged about our house view.
If any technologists are feeling inspired by this week’s announcement, you can sign up to serve! The No10 Innovation Fellowship is open for applications. And as a side note, it’s great to see them role-modelling a much simpler application process, based just on a short CV in the first stage — something we’ve called for in our recent research!
Onto our chart of the week...
This week’s most interesting bit of analysis goes to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, in their annual report. A total of 27 major government projects are now red-rated by the IPA! A red rating means “appears to be unachievable” — a damning verdict from the oversight body, and worrying for the taxpayers forking out the £98 billion being spent on those red-rated projects. Food for thought for the Treasury ahead of the Spending Review. We hope the IPA continue to produce analysis this detailed in their new incarnation as the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority next year!