The Department for Science, Technology and Innovation (DSIT) has identified five ‘kickstarter’ early initiatives under the new Blueprint for modern digital government programme.
They have been highlighted in the programme document as measures for the first six months of this year to show what can be achieved “through open collaboration and public engagement”.
DSIT had flagged up two of the initiatives in advance of publishing the document: the launch of a new cross-government vulnerability scanning service, to be managed by the Government Digital Service (GDS) to identify cyber security weaknesses; and the development of a smartphone GOV.UK App and GOV.UK Wallet which will include government issued documents.
These will be accompanied by pilots of the GOV.UK Chat chatbot, aimed at resolving complex queries from the public in a matter of seconds. It is powered by a large language model and seen as a good way of demonstrating the responsible use of AI in digital public services.
Collaborating on health conditions
Another plan is for GDS to collaborate with organisations across the public sector to pilot improvements on managing long term health conditions and disabilities. This is part of an effort to get more people working, addressing the needs of over 2.5 million who are economically inactive due to health issues, and is relevant to healthcare, employment, housing and education.
Finally, a new AI accelerator upskilling programme is aimed at helping digital professionals become machine learning engineers, and therefore increase the AI expertise in government departments.
