The Cabinet Office has announced a plan to parachute AI and data specialists from the private sector into government departments to boost the relevant skills capability.
It is also setting up a Data Marketplace for the sharing of data inside government.
Cabinet Office Minister Jeremy Quinn MP revealed the plans in a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank, saying they are aimed at overhauling the use of digital and data to make Whitehall run more efficiently.
The Digital Secondment Programme for AI and data specialise is scheduled to begin during the autumn. The Government will target FTSE100 companies to provide experts for secondments to work with civil servants.
It will then be expanded to other sectors such as science and engineering.
Stifled by bureaucracy
“There are brilliant people in our Civil Service but I know there are many, as can be the case in any organisation, that feel frustrated and stiffed by bureaucracy,” Quinn said.
“Alongside the cabinet secretary, I shared with Civil Service colleagues at Civil Service Live in Cardiff last week that we need every colleague to be calling out waste and inefficiency, determined to end the frustrations I know many share.
“They can do so by more specialisation, more access to outside voices and fresh ideas, staying longer in post, delivering certainty on what we are seeking to achieve and benefitting from crisp evaluation on whether we have, while embracing the digital future which will transform all our working lives.”
Quinn added that this will be accompanied by the development of a streamlined recruitment process supported by a new digital platform for moving civil servants between departments. This is intended to make the Civil Service more agile and to provide savings of approximately £100 million over the next five years.
In addition, the i.AI unit responsible for exploring automation and innovation in government will become a permanent team following a successful trial.
Marketplace plan
The plan for the Data Marketplace was included in the Roadmap for Digital and Data, published last year, and will include a data catalogue, standards and governance models to support best practice data sharing.
The Central Digital and Data Office has previously indicated that it will provide a central place to find and understand how to access data from across government in a legal, ethical and effective way.
The Cabinet Office related the initiatives to a drive for efficiencies in central government, claiming savings of £4.4 billion in the last financial year, including £1.3 billion through fraud detection and prevention and £370 million through modernising legacy IT systems.
