TL;DR: UK public sector digital leaders warn that AI’s promise in public services will only be realised through common standards, transparent governance, and citizen-centred design, with councils increasingly seeking cross-sector collaboration to avoid duplicating effort and maximise impact.
Speaking at Think Digital Government, digital and data experts discussed opportunities and pitfalls of deploying AI across local government, nonprofits, and frontline public services, emphasising that transformation will be incremental rather than revolutionary.
Breaking Down Departmental Silos
For councils, AI enables far more detailed understanding of resident needs. Julian Patmore, service director for digital and customer access at Peterborough City Council, described how transcription tools and conversational analytics help councils understand why people make contact and what outcomes they need.
“We can now do the common data to understand what these pinch points are,” Patmore explained. This capability can help dismantle long-standing departmental silos that confuse residents: “As a resident of the council, where do I go to get the service that I need? I don’t know how the council is structured – I don’t care about different departments. I just want the services.”
This approach aligns with a vision many authorities follow: “Digital where possible, but human where it matters.”
Incremental Implementation Over ‘Big Bang’
Panellists stressed that transformation will not—and should not—always be delivered through major programmes. “Transformation using AI doesn’t need to be an enormous project,” said Kris Burtwistle, head of UK local government and not for profits at AWS.
Instead, organisations should seek opportunities to “iterate things really incrementally… maybe automate a pathway into a particular service as a first thing, prove success, and then look at the next service.” Small wins help justify investment, build evidence, and reduce risk.
Cross-Sector Collaboration Imperative
The need for consistent, shared approaches dominated the discussion. “All of us are going through the same challenge around what AI means as an organisation,” Patmore noted. For the first time, councils are “speaking to each other and wanting to learn from each other.”
He argued for a common local-government framework to avoid every council commissioning its own agents: “We can actually get that in a uniform way… let’s use a common orchestrator and a common set of agents.”
Burtwistle agreed: “Local authorities have the same statutory responsibilities. If something works in one place, it stands to reason it should work somewhere else too.” Open-source tooling, convening customer groups, and publishing shared code via platforms like GitHub were highlighted as essential mechanisms for scaling innovation.
Trust Through Transparency
Trust remains critical—not because AI is inherently unreliable, but because expectations differ sharply from human interactions. “We expect more from AI than we do from human. If a human makes a mistake, it’s fine. But as soon as AI makes a mistake, it’s a catastrophe,” Patmore observed.
He argued that improved data visibility means errors can now be identified and corrected faster than with human-only services: “We can fix those quicker than we could beforehand.”
Vendor Cooperation Required
Suppliers have a role in reducing fragmentation, particularly where legacy systems restrict access. Traditionally, councils were told: “If you want to do that, then you have to buy this tool.” AI-driven approaches now allow more flexible integration—but only if vendors cooperate.
“You need to be more open. Join the party… it benefits them as well as us,” Patmore stated. Burtwistle said suppliers can help by creating spaces for shared learning and co-creating tools that are easy for others to redeploy.
Despite AI’s technical complexity, panellists emphasised that fundamentals of service design remain unchanged. At its core, good service design still relies on conversation: getting people into a room, cutting through jargon, and finding common ground. “Services know what they want to deliver… but it’s not until you actually get in the room and start having proper conversations that you get to that common language.”
Source: Think Digital Partners