The government is inviting private companies specialising in building technology solutions which incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to work collaboratively to ‘transform public services’.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has launched an initial set of priority AI exemplar projects set to show how AI can help to transform public services to make people’s lives easier and deliver on the Plan for Change.
It is suggested the collaboration could help develop agentic AI tools which would deliver more ‘autonomous’ systems which can plan and react to tasks with little oversight.
Unlike traditional AI, which is largely trained on specific topics to react to user input, agentic AI systems are proactive and goal-oriented, making decisions and taking actions to achieve desired outcomes.
The government says such systems could help people when they move home with administrative tasks like updating an address on a digital driving licence, registering with a new GP, registering to vote and more.
The tool will initially be trialled to help people with employment and skills but if successful, the government says it will ‘experiment to see if agentic AI can help with other life milestones’.
UK technology secretary Peter Kyle said:
“We can entirely rethink and reshape how public services help people through crucial life moments using the power of emerging AI technology. Using agentic AI to its full potential, we could provide a level of service to citizens across the country that was previously unimaginable – helping people to find better career opportunities, avoid wasting their time on government admin and more.”
To deliver this, public/private partnerships will bring together expertise and dedicated AI specialists to build prototypes of the technology over six-to-twelve months, although the government say it will maintain ownership of the product into the future.
A ‘National AI Tender’ has been issued which will follow a ‘Scan, Pilot, Scale’ approach recommended by the AI Opportunities Action to determine feasibility. A staged building process will ensure the tool is ‘consistently being evaluated and rigorously tested to make sure it is ultimately reliable and accurate enough to be used by people across the country when it’s ready’, Whitehall says.
Another example of use in the property market is the ‘Extract’ tool, which will standardise data faster by converting decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into digital and interrogable data, and powering new types of planning software to slash 250,000 estimated hours spent by planning officers each year manually checking documents.
Kyle concluded:
“We are asking the world’s brightest AI developers to work in collaboration with our own brilliant AI teams as we test how valuable their latest tech can be in helping people in their day-to-day lives. At each step, we’ll only progress if the technology can be used in a safe and reliable way – but if it works, we could be the first country in the world to use AI agents at scale.”
If it is successful at each stage, an agentic AI solution could be rolled out across the country from the end of 2027.
