AI Saves the Kingdom

This is a story about a kingdom. 

It's not a fairy tale kingdom. No, it's a real life kingdom, our own kingdom. You might call it The United Kingdom. 

A spring time call went out across the land. An update on our journey to future prosperity.

A new alchemy has been made available throughout the realm. And it promises much!

A bold vision was cast of how “AI” would change the world. Leaders declared that this is the time to unlock amazing power. 

Artificial Intelligence WILL transform our public services. 

• They will run more smoothly. 

• They will increase productivity. 

• Governance will be smarter; more dynamic. 

Incredible promise. Incredibly exciting.

Imagine an AI infused public sector.

• It is mega productive. 

• The forms just fill themselves in. 

• And citizens feel like they're being seen and served, not just processed. 

So the call goes out, across the whole land. We are going to modernise! 

But there was no response.

The call went unanswered… 

You see, the various Departments of State found it very difficult to envision how this could be brought to life.

Why?

Because there's no data. Or, more to the point, there is data but it's written in an old format. It's locked away somewhere in some forgotten system that's decades old and nobody quite understands how it all works.

The current technology may as well be tablets of stone. … Legacy… maybe decades old.

The data they do manage to harvest… is often lost…. or needlessly duplicated… unreliable… false.

There are one or two shining lights. The forward thinkers. They have seen this coming. 

The technology is in good shape, the data is mature and hygienic. 

.. but the wizards needed to perform this new alchemy are in short supply. Where are the data scientists…. Where are the technical architects? 

The new ways of working, the new ways of thinking, the new skills required… they haven’t been passed on.

The skilled wizards cannot be found. 

So the call goes unanswered. The promise is wasted. The opportunities lost

—-

60 % of government agencies struggle to access the high quality data required to enable AI transformation.

70% of government agencies can’t find the skilled people to bring this vision to life.

AI transformation is not a technology problem. The technology is going to happen to us.

• It’s an infrastructure problem, 

• a leadership problem, 

• a skills problem. 

It's a much bigger problem. A problem that’s always been there.  

It plagues not just governments, but large institutions, big enterprise organisations, mature IT teams.

AI will eat the world. That is for sure. 

However, we know that there are a number of obstacles holding back large organisations from actually embracing this coming change. 

• thousands of applications that should have been decommissioned decades ago, but somehow still managed to work. 

• Heavy regulation means huge risks; heavy fines, maybe someone is going to prison. 

• Entire departments dedicated to slowing things down in order to mitigate operational risk.

• In publicly listed organisations every major technology decision goes before the investors and comes under huge scrutiny. 

People always move more slowly than we’d like. And many organisations have;

• too much legacy, 

• too many users, 

• too much revenue to protect

This will leave space for others to expand into. 

Beware of promised efficiency. Beware those coming to fill the void.