London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Don’t be scared of AI — it will help revolutionise our struggling public services

Don’t be scared of AI — it will help revolutionise our struggling public services

Sometimes things in life go well, until they don’t. I remember working in Downing Street in 2010, and we were about to start a spending review process, which is when the Treasury decides how much money each department is going to get, and how best to save money.
The way this usually works is that a cloistered cabal of civil servants and hungover political advisers get together in a room and decide everything.

I figured that we could start to use technology to do things differently — by opening up the process to hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers for the first time, and enabling them to feed in practical ideas about ways to cut costs in their own departments.

So we created a simple website where government employees could submit their thoughts, and emailed half a million public-sector workers to let them know about it. The tech experiment was a big success — and within just a few weeks we were announcing specific money-saving changes that had come directly from this digital initiative.

If I’d have stopped there, it would have been fantastic. But I figured that if this kind of “open source” policy making had worked so well with government staff, we should take the next step, and open it up to the public as a whole.

So we set up a Facebook page called the Treasury Spending Challenge, and waited for the collective wisdom of the British people to reveal itself. Almost instantaneously, the page was inundated with porn and abuse, and some wag quickly built a Facebook page with a big photo of a goat on it, along with the caption: “Can this goat get more likes than the Treasury Spending Challenge?” Needless to say, the goat won easily.

So when it comes to using technology to improve government, the upside can be massive, but you also need to know that sometimes things will go wrong along the way.

Nowhere is that more true right now than the opportunity for artificial intelligence (AI) software to transform the way citizens interact with the state, and how public services are run.

When I was in government, we replaced more than 700 separate public-sector websites with a single one: gov.uk, which saved a bunch of money, and also made it easier for the public to find the information they needed.

Today, you can take the next step: start to use AI chatbot software so that people can ask questions like “Do I need planning permission for my garden shed in Ealing?” or “What government benefits am I eligible for as a new parent?”, and start to get detailed and helpful information back.

Think of it like ChatGPT for government services — with big potential cost savings, because citizens won’t have to speak to contact centre staff to get the information that they need.

Another obvious area where AI could be used in government is in healthcare.

There are lots of ways this could have a positive impact, but one example is to use software to transcribe and summarise the conversation between the patient and doctor, add it to patient records, and then automatically make bookings with secondary care. What a help that would be — for doctors and patients alike.

One more area where AI could be transformative is in policing, where officers investigating a case often end up drowning in millions of emails and text messages, trying to find a needle of evidence in a giant digital haystack.

Getting AI to read that content and then being able to ask it questions (like “Did person A ever invite person B back to their house?”) could be a game-changer for the police, saving countless hours and enabling them to focus on the parts of their job that only humans can do.

Some of these ideas might sound far-fetched, but the speed that AI software is progressing probably means that in a few years’ time, these suggestions will seem mundane compared to what’s actually possible.

Whoever wins the next election is actually in a surprisingly fortuitous situation, given that their time in government is coinciding with the most significant technological shift since the dawn of the internet: the AI revolution.

If Rishi Sunak or Sir Keir Starmer make the most of this opportunity, they could end up presiding over an era of reform that’s rare in British politics.

As my experience of getting my arse kicked by a goat shows you, not everything they do will work out. Hopefully that won’t stop them trying.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×